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THE
RED HEART OF RUSSIA

mam

Every wave of revolution in Petrograd broke over the cobbles of the great Wintc
" Palace Square — The Dvortsovaya ' ;

THE
RED HEART OF RUSSIA

BY
BESSIE BEATTY

War Correspondent of San Francisco Bulletin

ILLUSTRATED BY
PHOTOGRAPHS

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

1918

Published, October, 1918

TO
FOUR WHO SAW THE SUNRISE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THREE GOOD SAMARITANS .... 3

II DIPLOMATS — OFFICIAL AND OTHERWISE 26

III IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS ... 46

IV SPECKS ON THE HORIZON 65

V THE BATTALION OF DEATH .... 90

VI IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND . . 115

VII OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES . . 132

VIII THE MAN ON HORSEBACK .... 146

IX THE CENTRABALT MAKES AN EXCEPTION 164

X THE RISE OF THE PROLETARIAT . . . 178

XI THE FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE . . 201

XII THE DAY OF SHAME 225

XIII THE GRAVE OF HOPE 244

XIV MOTHER Moscow WEEPS .... 259

XV BLASTING AT THE ESTABLISHED ORDER . 271

XVI IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE . . . 292

XVII THE GREAT GRAY WOLF 312

XVIII TSARS AND PEASANTS 335

XIX WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION .... 357

XX REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY . . . 386

XXI ON THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE . . 407

XXII THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS . . . 430

XXIII THE GREAT BETRAYAL 446

A MESSAGE TO MARS 475

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Every wave of revolution in Petrograd broke over
the cobbles of the great Winter Palace Square
— The Dvortsovaya .... Frontispiece

FACING

PAGE

Around the statue of Alexander III, symbol of old

Russia, the talking multitudes surged . . 32
First Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' and Depu-
ties 32

Alexander Kerensky in the study of the Tzar . . 33
The great stucco Winter Palace in which the

American guests were housed 33

Bessie Beatty in the "dark forests at the front" 80

A soldiers' shrine behind the lines 80

Lake Narach — a part of No Man's Land ... 80
Captured barbed wire entanglement — Peter at the

left 80

Blessing of the banners of the Battalion of Death 81
The Woman's Regiment on review before its de-
parture for the trenches 81

Lining up for soup and kasha 112

Women soldiers at rest between drills . . . .112
The crowd hugs the Nevsky to get out of range of

the machine guns in the July riots . . .113

The Cossacks bury their dead 113

A typical street scene in the Volga river towns . 136

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE

Barges of wood on the Neva 137

The Volga — the great highway of Russia from Pet-

rograd to the Caspian Sea 144

To Zizhni Novgorod, where the Oka and the Volga
rivers meet, the commerce of the world comes
flowing 145

Korniloff, his staff and Cossack bodyguard from

the "Wild Division" 172

Bicycle troops to the rescue of Kerensky . . . 172

Baltic sailors' bayonets speak for the Soviet . . 173

A dining room in the Matrosski Klub (Sailors'

Club), Helsingfors 173

The proclamation of the Military Revolutionary
Committee announcing the fall of the Keren-
sky government 208

IVomen soldiers in their last stand before the Win-
ter Palace 209

The pass which permitted the author safe conduct

through the Bolshevist lines 209

The Winter Palace from the Red Arch . . . 240
Russian soldiers at home in the Palace of a Grand

Duke 240

Soldiers and factory workers took the place of

striking telephone operators 241

Red Guards on duty before Trotzky's door . . 241
The Minister of Rumania and his staff just before
his incarceration in the Fortress of Peter and

Paul 256

Old Ivan Veliki high up in the heavens faithfully
thundered the hours above the citadel of
church and state ... ... 257

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Mother Moscow sat serene arnid the domes of her

churches 272

After the Moscow battle 273

The Grave of the Brotherhood beside the old Krem-
lin wall . 273

Marie Spiridonova 288

Lunarcharsky 288

Leon Trotzky . 288

Nikolai Lenin 288

Krylenko 288

Alexandria Kolontai . 288

Kamineff 288

Yesterday and to-day on the Marsovaya Pola.
Priests with lifted ikons and gorgeous robes
and Red Guards with bayonets and crimson
banners 289

A peasant milkman and his customers. Milk was
sold only on card to mothers with babies and
for invalids 320

In open-air bazars where there is little to sell but

many to buy, Russia does her marketing . . 321

Under the thatched roofs in villages like this, one
hundred and twenty million Russian peasants
make their home 352

Katherine Breshkovskaya and her two aged com-
rades, Lazareff and Nicholas Tchaikowsky
with her American friends, Col. Wm. B.
Thompson and Col. Raymond Robins . . 353

Soldiers' wives on the Nevsky demonstrating for in-
creased allowance , . 353

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGB

It was a dangerous partnership, for when the state

fell the church tottered also 400

New Russia votes for the Constituent Assembly . 401

Young Russia makes revolutionary demonstration

at school 401

Meeting in the library of the Tauride Palace De-
cember 11 where in defiance of the People's
Commissaries the Constituent Assembly was
declared open 448

The Constituent Assembly as it finally convened in

the Tauride Palace January 18 .... 448

The Russian delegation arrives at Brest-Litovsk . 449

The photographs copyrighted by Orrin S. Wight-
man are published through the courtesy of Colonel W.
B. Thompson of the Red Cross Mission to Russia.

THE
RED HEART OF RUSSIA

CHAPTER I

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

PETROGRAD!

Out there in the silver twilight of the white
night she lay, a forest of flaming church steeples
and giant factory chimneys, rising vaguely from
the marshes. I pressed my face closer to the
dust-crusted windowpane and searched the flying
landscape.

There on the edge of the East she waited for
us, strange, mysterious, inscrutable, compelling
— a candle drawing us on from the ends of the
earth like so many fluttering moths.

Twelve long, hot, dusty days the Trans-Si-
berian Express had been crawling toward her, —
crawling like a snake across flower-strewn steppe
and velvet forest, — the one unclean thing upon
this new-born world of spring.

I glanced at my wrist-watch — it was twenty

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

minutes past two on a morning in early June of
the year 1917. Here we were, despite war and
revolution, peeping into Peter's "Window" only
four hours behind schedule.

Involuntarily I breathed a tiny sigh of disap-
pointment. Nothing, nothing, had happened.
Even the dreary, desolate Siberian wastes had
failed to live up to their promise. Six thousand
versts of emerald meadows, cut with shimmering
china-blue waterways, stretched behind us. Six
thousand versts of meadows, covered with a mist
of wild flowers — pink, mauve, and flaming yel-
low— and broken frequently with deep woods,
where silver birches played like sunshine against
the shadowed background of dusky pines — that
was Siberia.

At every log station, with its red flags and its
row of poplars, a crowd of front -bound soldiers,
in worn, dun-colored uniforms, tried to board the
train, only to settle peacefully back to more in-
terminable hours of waiting when the Committee
of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, traveling
with us, had explained the necessity.

Occasionally in the night we were suddenly
awakened, when the door of our compartment was

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

thrown open by a guard searching for an escaped
Austrian prisoner. Otherwise, the monotony of
our journey had remained unbroken.

Well, it was done. Ten minutes more, and
Petrograd would open the door of a new world to
us. I glanced down the car at a row of passion-
ate faces flattened against the windows, while
hungry eyes drank deep of once familiar scenes.
They were home-bound exiles, these companions
of mine, going back to a land whose door had long
been closed in their faces. Home! Every click
of the wheels carried me farther and farther away
from that scrap of earth on the other side of the
world which I called home.

My mind wandered back to that sunny day,
two months before, when through a mist of tears
I had watched the hills of California disappear
behind the Golden Gate. How blithely I had
come away ! Blithely, because I knew that mine
was a land where the latch-string was always out,
and I could go back again at a moment's choosing.

I tried to think what it must be to be coming
home to the land of the bolted door, to the land
of the black scowl — the land that had suddenly
thrown down its bars and turned a friendly, smil-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing face and open arms toward the lonely out-
casts.

My eyes wandered to the vestibule, where a
Siberian soldier sat upon his kit-bag, a tin can
with a bunch of dead lilies-of-the-valley held
tightly in his two hards. For ten days and ten
nights he had sat there, his big, round, brown eyes
looking out across the great spaces, resignation
and the infinite patience of these people of the
East and the North reflected in his face. Home
for him was done up in that little bunch of lilies-
of-the-valley, long since dead. Every day I had
passed him on my way to the dining-car, and my
body ached with vicarious weariness as I saw him
uncomplainingly sitting and dreaming over the
faded lilies. He and I, of all the passengers,
were the only ones who were not going home.

My musings were suddenly cut short. The
Trans-Siberian Express, train de luxe of the
longest railroad in the world, was slipping quietly
to its place beside a deserted platform. A clean-
cut young Englishman, on his way to be married
in Petrograd, adjusted his coat collar the final
time, and patted his hat to see that it was placed
at the proper angle. Then he put his head out

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

of the window to receive the first welcoming smile
of the sweetheart he had not seen for a year. He
drew his head in again, surprise, pain, embarrass-
ment mingled on his fine, boyish face. She was
not there.

Farther down the aisle, Count Tolstoy, son of
the great Tolstoy, returning from America, lifted
his window and searched the vacant platform for
the face of his wife. He, too, turned back disap-
pointed. Petrograd was as unaware of us as
though we had been so many ghosts flitting in-
visibly through the air. Petrograd was entirely
engrossed in its own very important affairs.
Even the station-master had failed to take cog-
nizance of our coming. In the absence of port-
ers, we trucked our own baggage ; and we had to
wake up the guard to unlock the door and let us
through.

Outside, the big circle was flooded with the light
of the white night. My eyes focused for a mo-
ment on Trubetskoy's squat, heavy, powerful
granite man on horseback, Alexander III, —
symbol of departed Romanoffs, symbol of dead
Russia, — then wandered about in dazed bewilder-
ment.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The cobblestones were dotted with men and
women gathered in groups and talking in high-
pitched, excited voices, eyes blazing and arms
waving: students, peasants, soldiers, workmen,
pouring a torrent of words into the night.

"What is the matter? Is it another revolu-
tion?" I asked breathlessly.

"No," some one answered, "nothing is hap-
pening. They are just talking. It has been
like this ever since March."

"But it 's the middle of the night," I said.
"It 's nearly morning. Something must be
wrong."

"They talk all day and all night, all the time,"
my informant continued. "In the old days, you
know, they were not allowed to talk, and now
that the dam is broken, the flood of language
never stops."

One lone and dilapidated carriage, drawn by a
bored and weary looking horse, with head framed
in a high wooden collar, stood at the curb. A
Russian came through the door, and shouted, ap-
parently into the air, a single magic word: "Iz-
vostchik !"

A perambulating feather-bed in voluminous

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

folds of blue broadcloth detached itself from the
nearest crowd, swept its broadcloth train majes-
tically over the sidewalk, and mounted the box.
The carriage rattled away, the linguistically
accomplished Russian and all his bags stowed
neatly within. I watched this achievement with
undisguised admiration and envy, blankly won-
dering what I should do next.

A fellow traveler, a Swedish girl on her way
home from Japan to be married to an English
officer, joined me. Behind her waddled the stout
and pleasing person of the Finnish missionary
who with her "many luggages" had shared my
compartment from Harbin.

We held a consultation. Here we were, all
utterly alone at half -past two in the morning, in
this great, strange city which talked on and on
without even a glance in our direction. Our
telegrams to friends were probably traveling in
the mail-bags on the same train or coming along
on next week's express.

A young Russian officer came gallantly to the
rescue.

"I telegraphed for a room — you ladies can have
that," he said; and, turning to me: "If you will

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

stay and mind the luggage, we will go uptown
and see about it."

The last thing in the world I wanted to do at
that moment was to stay and mind the luggage.
The station was hot, close, and dirty. Soldiers-
weary brown men in worn uniforms, unwashed
and unshaven — asleep on their kit-bags or curled
up on the floor in their overcoats, lay so thick that
you had to pick your way carefully. I was tired
of places that were close and dirty. I longed to
be out in those strange, wide streets, so full of
people with so many things to say that the days
were not long enough. Politeness set a seal
upon desire. My friends promised to be back in
twenty minutes, so I returned to the stuffy wait-
ing-room, and the odd assortment of bags and
bundles for which I was to be responsible.

There was a clock on the wall, and the minute-
hand slowly made its way around the dial. An
hour passed — it was half-past three. Still no
sign of the Russian gallant. The minute-hand
began another journey.

Once for a few seconds I forgot the minute-
hand. The waiter from the dining-car, who had
grown more and more stepmotherly in the dis-

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

tribution of portions as the journey progressed,
entered the room. He walked to the corner
where half a dozen bundles of soiled table linen
were stacked, and, glancing about to see that no
one was looking, he swiftly untied them. From
the center of each he took a fifty-pound sack of
white flour. It was no longer difficult to explain
the sparkling stones from the Ural Mountains
appearing on the hands of the dining-car crew as
the train pulled out of Vyatka, or difficult to be-
lieve the stories of the five-hundred-ruble game
in progress in the dining-car of evenings. Flour
in Petrograd was scarcer than Ural brilliants
and far more highly priced.

At a quarter to five my friends returned.
There was not a room to be had in Petrograd,
they said. The Hotel Europe was crowded.
At the France they were sleeping in the sitting-
rooms. The Astoria, which had been the best
hotel in town, was occupied by the military, and
no civilians were allowed.

The Russian suggested that we stay where we
were until the populace began to wake up, —
about ten o'clock, — then consult our respective
consuls. Nothing on earth could have induced

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

me at that moment to spend five seconds longer
in the fetid atmosphere of that station. Five
hours was a prospect I refused even to contem-
plate.

The guard was once more asleep and the door
locked. I made my way through a labyrinth of
baggage-rooms to an opening on a side street.
The same groups of men were still excitedly talk-
ing, and here and there along the curb a peasant
woman, with a market-basket of hard-boiled eggs,
cucumbers, lemons, or sunflower seeds, offered
her wares.

I paused at the corner and speculated as to
which road to take. The Nevsky Prospect, fa-
mous as the Champs Elysees, the Strand, and
Fifth Avenue, though I knew it not for itself at
the moment, stretched wide before me in one di-
rection. To my left was another street only
slightly narrower, and flanked on either side by
towering buildings, large enough to house a world
of little people like myself. Surely, in all those
great masses of wood and stucco and stone, there
was some little corner where I could put my
weary head. I walked in a daze, peering up at
the strange painted signs. If it had been an

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

overcoat, a cheese, or a pair of boots for which I
had been searching, it would have been quite sim-
ple; for the little shops were profusely covered
with frightful paintings of all these things, de-
signed for people who, like myself, could not
read.

Three blocks from the station I came upon a
huge ornate gray building, rambling around three
sides of a court. There was an air of elegance
about the place, and on one of the doors was a
small brass sign, which looked as though it might
be designed for people who could read. I picked
out the letters one by one, trying frantically to
remember whether the English r was the Russian
p or vice versa. The building had the look of
a hotel. It might as easily have been a theater,
or a palace, or the police-station, for all the in-
telligence those strange letters conveyed to me.

I was just screwing up my courage to the point
of entering when an izvostchik drove up to the
door, and Count Tolstoy and the lost wife stepped
out. He came quickly to the rescue.

"Yes, yes, this is the Select Hotel," he said.
"If you will step inside I will ask if there is a
room for you, and perhaps you would like to take

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

my izvostchik back to the station for your bag-
gage. But first the passportist must have your
passport."

Five minutes later I was back at the depot,
announcing the news to the astounded group,
and gathering the weary women and the "many
luggages" into the ramshackle old carriage. At
six o'clock the wild pigeons in the courtyard sang
me to sleep.

I awoke with a start six hours later. "Where
am I?" I asked. "In Petrograd," I answered
myself — "in Petrograd, in the heart of the Revo-
lution." The midday sun, creeping through the
window of my tiny room, made all its imperfec-
tions pitifully plain. I was grateful to that room
as to a stranger who had found me homeless and
opened her door, but I wanted to be quickly away,
out into the exciting promise of the blue-and-gold
day. I dressed hurriedly and ran through a
stack of letters of introduction, but discarded
them all. On a slip of paper I found an ad-
dress, "Moika 64." It was the home of a news-
paper man — a fellow correspondent, an old
friend. On this day I needed an old friend. I

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

would find Moika 64, and on the way I would
stop for breakfast at the Hotel Europe.

It was all quite simple, you see. Where were
those threatening dangers poured like poison into
my ears? Petrograd was like any other place.
The clerk at the desk answered my simple Eng-
lish request for directions with a shake of his head
and a volley of Russian, from which I fled in
laughing despair.

Once outside, I made my way to that wide
street rejected earlier in the morning. There
was an air of importance about it, something that
made me feel it led to that nebulous locality
which in every city we call "uptown."

A dozen street-cars passed me. They were
crowded with soldiers who filled seats, aisles, and
platforms, and overflowed on to the steps. I
hailed one, and squirmed my way through the
faded uniforms to the woman conductor in blue
broadcloth and gold buttons.

"Pazhal'sta, Hotel Europe?" I said, exhaust-
ing in one breath half of my entire Russian vo-
cabulary.

She shook her head, a simple gesture that I

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

understood perfectly, then followed it with a vol-
ley of language which left me dazed. She looked
at my blank and bewildered face.

"American," I said. Again she shook her
head. Then a great light broke into her face.

"Amerikanka, da, da, da!" she said, and
laughed in pleased delight at her discovery.

I handed her my paper with Moika 64 upon
it. It was written in English and conveyed noth-
ing to her.

By this time the entire car had become inter-
ested. A simple-looking woman, with a platok
on her head, took the paper, and she and two com-
panions consulted long and earnestly over it.
They motioned me to wait. The car moved
slowly up the wide wood-paved Nevsky; past
faded brick and yellow stucco palaces, whose
proud sides were pasted with revolutionary post-
ers and proclamations; past the great Gostinny
Dvor (Court of the Strangers), where the little
shops were shuttered now in Sabbath seclusion
behind the hedge of linden trees.

Like the muddy water in a stream, the endless
procession of khaki-clad soldiers flowed along the
street. The feather-bed izvostchiks, calling en-

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

couragement to their horses, rattled over the
wooden cobbles. Under the columns of the great
Kazan Cathedral, the little people, dwarfed by
the mighty proportions of this pile of masonry,
passed back and forth, crossing themselves and
dropping alms into the hands of beggars on the
wide steps. On the gravel-covered paths in the
formal garden the children played hop -scotch,
while their parents sat on the benches, contentedly
watching them.

On every corner, and in between streets, the
groups of people were talking, talking, talking!
Ambulances and field hospital wagons, decorated
with red flags and green boughs, and filled with
crippled soldiers and Red Cross nurses, darted in
from side streets and all hurried off in the same
direction.

Quite abruptly we turned a corner and skirted
the edges of a pleasant park, with trees in full
leaf, and a multitude of birds noisily chattering
in the young spring green. Ivan in khaki, with
Vera beside him in her best spring clothes, strolled
along the winding paths, or sat contentedly
munching sunflower seeds, and talking as volubly
as the noisy sparrows up above.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Peace, joy, exultation, was upon that spring-
clad city. Freedom was young then, like the
spring, like the leaves on the trees, like Vera and
Ivan. Freedom was a butterfly upon a high
bush, the sheen still upon her wings; and Vera
and Ivan looked, rejoiced, and feared to touch —
so new, so beautiful, so fragile.

Poor Ivan! Poor Vera! They could not
guess that afternoon, any more than I, what the
months would do to their butterfly treasure.
They could not know that they themselves would
soon lay violent hands upon it, and the day would
come when the broken wings would lie crushed
like a blade of grass beneath a heavy boot. They
could not know that Freedom must return in
many other guises before she would be strong
enough for Russia's need.

Eyes and ears hungrily drinking in strange
ights and sounds, and thoughts darting back and
forth from the land of Tolstoy, Turgenieff , and
Dostoievsky to the Russia of Ivan's dreaming,
I almost forgot that I had a destination, and a
rapidly increasing appetite.

Suddenly one of the three women who had

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

taken me under their wings touched me on the
shoulder and motioned me to follow. She left
her friends, and together we walked blocks and
blocks, while she searched silently for street num-
bers, and I tried to look the gratitude I could not
speak. Finally she stopped, smiling happily,
and pointed to a sign that read "64." Then,
with a cheery, friendly "Dosvidanya !" (Good-
bye!), she left me.

I knocked on the first door. The dvornik
shook his head. Then I tried the second. I bat-
tered at a dozen before I realized that in Russia
the entire building has the same number. At
last, up five flights of stairs, I found a gleam of
recognition in the eyes of the servant. She made
it clear by means of the sign language that there
was no one at home. But at sight of my crest-
fallen face she invited me in, and for half an hour
tried vainly to reach my friend by telephone.
She wept with exasperation at her inability to
help me, and to make herself understood.

It was half-past three when I found myself
again on the tree-bordered canal. I was still
without breakfast or luncheon, and heaven and

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the Russians only knew what had become of the
Hotel Europe. Both seemed to be involved in
a conspiracy of silence on the subject.

I wandered up the canal, stopping every likely
and unlikely person to ask if they spoke English.
Always I got the same headshake and the same
kindly "Nyet, nyet, barishna!"

I came out upon a huge square, crowded with
ambulances and field-wagons, automobiles, and
trucks, filled with crippled soldiers and sailors,
men from the ranks who had already paid the
heavy toll of war, — armless men and legless men,
and men with eyes to which sight would never
come back, — all were pleading with their able-
bodied brothers to fight to a victorious conclu-
sion.

It was a war demonstration, a pitiful, futile
attempt of the broken men to rally their brothers
to a standard they were rapidly deserting. For
the first time, my eyes were seeing what war does
to human flesh. I stood there, watching the faces
of these men, listening to the unintelligible tor-
rent of eloquence that poured from their lips, and
thought sorrowfully of another country half way
across the world making ready for this.

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

Finally I recalled my quest. Surely in all
that vast throng there must be some one who
spoke English. I walked in and out, trying one
and another; meeting always with that same be-
wildered headshake, and that same sympathetic
glance of true regret which every Russian, be he
prince or peasant, gives you when he is unable to
do the thing you ask. ,

I crossed the square, walking aimlessly I knew
not where. On the corner was a huge building
with high, boarded windows and bullet-holes in
the plastered walls. A man was sitting in the
doorway, and I asked if he spoke English. He
shook his head. I did not know which way to
turn. For some strange reason that I shall never
fathom, I walked through the doorway and into
the building.

I found myself in a huge, empty marble lobby,
opening into a series of large rooms stripped bare
of everything but a broken plate-glass cabinet of
silver inlay, and a bloodstained but once bright
rose-colored velvet carpet. I stood wondering
where I was, and what I should do next, when
down the broad stairs came a Russian officer in
the splendid full-skirted wine-colored coat of the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Caucasians. His dark olive face and black hair
were topped with a high military hat, and a sword
of inlaid silver jangled on each marble step as
he walked.

"Pardon, do you speak English?" I asked in a
faint and by this time rather despairing voice.

He clicked his spurs together, and bowed low
before me.

"A leetle, madame," he answered. "Can I be
of service to you?"

Never again will the sound of my native tongue
be such blissful music. I told him of my recent
arrival, and of my search for friends, and ended
with:

"I want to go somewhere where I can get some-
thing to eat."

He looked at me out of smiling and kindly
brown eyes.

"This is a hotel," he said. "The Astoria Ho-
tel. But it is now the headquarters of the mili-
tary, the Voina Gostinnitsa (War Hotel), and
civilians are not allowed. At the time of the
Revolution it was sacked, as you can see; so the
dining-room has been closed since, and meals are
served only in one's room. If you had a room

affe

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

you might have luncheon here. Are you the wife
of a military man, or something of that sort?"

I shook my head, told him I was nothing "of
that sort," and offered my card and credentials.
He brightened.

"Ah!" he said. "There may yet be a way.
The correspondents are under the control of the
military now, and it is just possible the General
might make an exception and permit you to stay
here. Shall I take you to him?"

I glanced at him for a single searching second,
then nodded. We climbed the marble stairs, and
at the end of a long corridor we came upon the
General, white-haired and white-whiskered, and
all that a Russian General should be. He arose
from behind a flat-top mahogany desk, bowed
low, kissed my hand, and invited me to a seat.

My new-found Caucasian friend explained me
in Russian, and the General nodded.

Fifteen minutes later, comfortably established
in my own little blue-and- white room on the sixth
floor of the War Hotel, amid all the conveniences
of a first-class American hotel, I sat down to a
platter of cold meat and a service of steaming
Russian tea. Another hour found me collecting

•a

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

typewriter and passports and preparing to es-
tablish a base of operations from which to ex-
plore that vast new Russia.

That night, on the roof-garden of the Europe,
overlooking the glistening domes and spires of the
City of Peter, I dined with friends. I had
stumbled upon them when I had ceased to look.

"Where are you stopping?" one of them asked.

"At the War Hotel," I answered.

Mouths and eyes opened in chorus.

"But it is impossible!" they said. "That is
for the military, and they are most strict that no
civilian be admitted."

I told them the story of the three Good Samari-
tans— of the little woman with the shawl over her
head, who left the car, her friends, and her own
pleasure, to walk blocks through the scorching
sun with a total stranger ; of the maid who almost
wept in her distress because she could not help
me; and, last, of the dark-haired knight of the
Caucasus, who made Cinderella's fairy god-
mother seem a mere stepmother by comparison.

Back in the little blue-and-white room,
wrapped in the warm glow of their kindliness, I
sat down in a bewildered heap to think it over.

ftl

THREE GOOD SAMARITANS

My mind wandered far that night, — into the
black past of Russia, and into the vague unknown
future, — but never did it even remotely suspect
the stirring times that room and I would share
together in the year to come.

CHAPTER II

DIPLOMATS OFFICIAL AND OTHERWISE

IT was less than a week after my early morn-
ing advent in Petrograd when I once more passed
before the candle-lighted ikons in the Nicolaiski
Station and out to the platform. This time the
station was far from deserted. A line of sol-
diers, a picked escort of stalwart men in dun-
colored coats, stood at attention. The tall, dark,
handsome young Foreign Minister, Teresh-
chenko, towered above the genial white-vested
person of the American Ambassador Francis.
The American colony was out in force.

The Provisional Government of Russia, suc-
cessor of Tsar and bureaucracy, between Cabinet
crises and food problems, had found time to pre-
pare to entertain. Ambassador-Extraordinary
Root and the special diplomatic mission to Rus-
sia were due to arrive at any moment.

Earlier in the day I had wandered curiously
through the great corridors of the rambling old

DIPLOMATS

Winter Palace and watched the servants putting
the finishing touches upon the mansion of the
Czars. With the true Russian sense of the
dramatic, the new hosts of all the Russias had
chosen to be at home to their republican brothers
from over the seas in the very premises where
royal heads were once held highest and lackeys'
backs once bent lowest.

The huge red stucco building — acres and acres
of it — had been swept and dusted and polished
until Nicholas himself could have found no spot
at which to point the imperial finger of disap-
proval. The big mahogany bath-tub in the am-
bassador's suite had been scrubbed for the last
time. The nudity of the tiny ultra-modern brass
bed, cowering behind the crushed-mulberry cur-
tains, had been only partly covered with fresh
linen and a new silk eiderdown quilt. The huge
oval-topped mahogany table from which Peter
the Great had taken his caviar and vodka was
prepared to serve ham and eggs American style.
As I looked from behind the pink silk curtains
out on the blue waters of the Neva, sparkling in
the spring sunshine, I wondered what the coming
of these Americans would mean to Russia.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

While official Russia was getting ready to wel-
come my countrymen, I had been trying to find
out what unofficial Russia was thinking about.
With the help of an interpreter, I had been
listening to the babble of voices that sounded
through the golden days and white nights. Al-
ready I had learned that revolution is a term as
variable as truth, and newly mined by every
man who speaks it.

r I discovered that the Revolution that over-
(threw the Tsar and absolutism was a simple thing,
^beautifully logical, gloriously unanimous. Ev-
ery one wanted it; every one was glad when it
came. The monarchy that had brought such
desperate misery to the millions crumbled to dust
with the first vigorous blow of the rising peoples
like a thing long since dead. The heavy heart
of Russia lifted in a mighty shout of joy : "Svo-
boda ! ( Freedom. ) We are free 1"

For the moment this was enough. That sin-
gle word, with its age-old power of placing man
on the mountain-tops, made Russia happy.

Soon her people began to be specific.

"Freedom for the peasant," they said. "Free-
dom for the worker." "Freedom for the sol-

DIPLOMATS

dier." "Freedom for the Jew." "Freedom for

women."

Russia still rejoiced, but with certain vague
mental reservations faintly disturbed by this di-
versity. Then came definition. Each man
translated revolution into the terms of his own
life.

Nicolai Voronoff, whom I met at dinner one
night, voiced the conservative intellectuals' idea
of freedom.

"Things could not go on as they were," he
said. "We had to have freedom. Freedom of
speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly,
inviolability of person — freedom as you Ameri*
cans and English know it."

Old Chekmar, the peasant delegate from a re-
mote south Russian village, spoke of freedom in
terms of land.

"Freedom for the peasant," he said. "Yes,
yes, land — we shall have land. The Tsar Alex-
ander gave it to us when he freed the serfs, but
the landlords have kept it away. Mother earth
—it is ours at last! — God's and the people's."

Chekmar tossed his fine old head in a gesture
of pride and exaltation as he said it, and his dull

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

blue eyes were lit with the fervor of young ideals.

The same light was in the eyes of Andrey
Krugloff, from the great Putiloff works, when
he said: "Freedom for the worker. The day
of the proletariat has come. The men who use
the tools shall control them, the fruits of labor
shall belong to labor. We will put an end to
capitalistic exploitation; we will do away with
poverty; the workers of the world shall unite."

Ivan Borovsky, who had come from the front
to attend the all-Russian convention of Work-
men's and Soldiers' Deputies, saw freedom in
terms of the soldiers. "Peace, peace," he said.
"We dig our graves and call them trenches.
What is the use of freedom to a man in his grave?
We will stop this bloody slaughter. This is not
our war. This is the Tsar's war. The soldiers
of all the world shall rise as we have done. They
will throw off the yokes of kings and kaisers, and
we will all make peace. There shall be no more
court-martial, no more capital punishment. We
will have honest, democratic peace. Then we
can go back to our farms and our factories and
put an end to all wars."

Little curly blond-haired Petroff, who brought
30

DIPLOMATS

me my morning chei (tea), with a smile that
sparkled like the sunshine on the Neva, defined
revolution in his own way when he refused to ac-
cept my first tip. "We are free now," he ex-
plained. "We will get our regular per cent of
the bill for service."

So it went. Revolution was to every man the
sum of his desires. Yet above and beneath and
beyond each man's interpretation was the deeper
thing that old Chekmar voiced when he spoke of
land as "God's and the people's." It was not
only of himself that Chekmar thought when he
said, "It is ours!" Personal greed could never
have brought that light into his dull blue eyes.
Something more than his own hours and wages
sounded through the words of Andrey Krugloff .
Hours and wages alone were not enough to lift
his heavy face out of the mold of common clay.
It was the knowledge that they were one with the
great living, breathing human mass — the people
— that filled their eyes with visions.

The honeymoon of Revolution was already
waning on that day when the American commis-
sion came to Petrograd; but the consciousness of
"the people" as an entity still remained. Slowly

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the years of political and economic slavery, land
hunger, and hideous physical poverty imposed

•

upon the many by the few had brought about a
mass consciousness that was the most vital force
in revolutionary Russia.

I discovered with surprise that the Tsar's name
was seldom mentioned. He ceased to count for
anything. A month after the first revolutionary
attack, he was as completely forgotten as if he
had never lived. When Vera and Ivan tore the
double-headed eagles from the great wrought-
iron fence around the Winter Palace, and ripped
the imperial coat-of-arms from the buildings to
make bonfires in the streets, all that there was of
Nicholas, even his memory, was burned.

With the tragic failure of the first Revolution
of 1905 and 1906, when the Workers tried to take
control and lost everything, still fresh in their
memory, they were trying desperately to cooper-
ate, to give and take, to use the power of the in-
tellectuals and at the same time direct revolution
into the channels through which they wanted it
to flow. They were theorists who had always
been denied the right of action. Never having
been allowed to try to put any of their theories

Around the statue of Alexander III, symbol of old Russia, the talking multitudes

surged

First Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies

Alexander Kerensky in the study of the Tzar

The great stucco Winter Palace in which the American guests were housed

DIPLOMATS

into practice, they had never learned how to com-
promise. Each group was willing to die for its
own particular definition of revolution, but no
group was able to yield to the theory of another.
Consequently, Cabinet crises followed Cabinet
crises.

Prince Lvoff and the scholarly Miliukoff had
already been retired to private life before the
Root Commission reached Russia. Miliukoff,
student of English institutions, saw freedom for
Russia in the terms of a constitutional monarchy.
To him, and to the liberals who gathered around
him, this was a sufficiently radical step for a
country that had only yesterday crawled out from
under the iron boot of absolutism. He and his
followers were a hopeless minority, and, in spite
of their past struggles for Russian freedom, were
soon discarded, with the monarchial idea. They
were liberals and could not follow Russia into
the new social realms she was so eager to explore.

The demand of the people for a republic was
insistent. The republican idea satisfied some,
but not enough. A social democracy — a social-
ist state — became the loudest..cry of the articu-
late proletariat.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

I heard it on the street corners and in the
crowded trams, along the wide paths of the parks,
and in the assembly rooms of palaces whose an-
cient walls might well have shuddered at the
strangeness of such sentiments.

Much of the time they talked of war, and I
heard unkempt soldiers in dilapidated uniforms
and workmen in shoddy suits demanding "an in-
terbelligerent conference," "statement of Allied
war aims," "publication of the secret treaties,"
as glibly as workingmen at home discuss hours
and wages.

Here and there a group talked of the coming
of the American Commission. Usually the
spokesman was an unofficial diplomat returned
from the United States and bringing his own de-
cided idea of us and our faults. There were
many of these in Petrograd in the days of early
June. Some of them hailed from Hester Street;
and Hester Street and New York's East Side
became formidable factors in complicating the
international situation. They had seen all of the
worst and none of the best of America. They
sat at the tables in the tea-room where the mem-
bers of the Soviet of Workmen's and Soldiers'

DIPLOMATS

Deputies gathered around the samovar, and told
stories of poverty and suffering on the East Side.

"Root is coming to make you fight," they said.
"Root does n't care anything about the Revolu-
tion. He 's a capitalist, a corporation attorney,
a hide-bound reactionary. In the United States
he 's against the workers."

Most of these men were honest revolutionists,
soap-boxers, actuated by nothing more than
hatred of the capitalistic system and a distrust of
all things bearing a government stamp. There
were other unofficial diplomats in Petrograd
whose words had a different origin. They were
under orders from Berlin, and their business was
to discredit America and the Allies and make the
Russian masses believe the German people were
the true friends of Revolution. They conducted
a telling and profitable propaganda. To begin
with, they had linguistic and geographical advan-f
tages that the Allies could not overcome. Many
Germans speak Russian, still more Russians
speak German. Being next-door neighbors, the
Germans understood the Russian psychology.

They knew that nothing in the world meant
anything to the mass of the Russians but saving

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

their Revolution, and they simulated a sympathy
for revolution that they were temperamentally in-
capable of possessing. They pictured Germany
as huftgry for democratic peace, and the Allies
as imperialists who would not stop fighting until
they had crushed the German masses and divided
the German territory. They accused the Allies
of trying to continue the war for the purpose of
destroying the Revolution. They took the pas-
sion and idealism of the Russian mass and tried
to turn it to their own ends.

They also had something to say about the com-
ing of the American Commission, and they said
it where it would take effect.

For the most part, unofficial Russia was too
engrossed in its own very important business to
pay much attention to the tall, gray-haired, dis-
tinguished American who was coming to town.
Unofficial Russia was concerned chiefly with de-
fining revolution, and each individual group was
possessed of a passionate necessity for making
the other groups accept its definition.

All together, it was not a happy situation into
which the imperial train was bringing the Ameri-
can diplomats that June afternoon. The train,

DIPLOMATS

looking almost as it did when the royal family last
journeyed forth from Petrograd, slipped into
view on the appointed second.

At ten o'clock next morning Ambassador Root
sat in a corner of the huge drawing-room in his
suite at the Winter Palace with his back to the
light. Half a dozen of us foreign correspondents
sat stiffly upon the edges of flower-brocaded
chairs drawn in a circle around him, while he
introduced the Washington Code into Petrograd.

The Washington Code is a Maxim silencer.
It is a gentleman's agreement to which an occa-
sional lady is reluctantly admitted. A great man
sits in a corner — with his back to the light — and
announces that he would like to be able to discuss
quite openly everything that happens and even
to have the benefit of your advice. Of course,
if he is to do so, he must be assured that all he
says will be held in strictest confidence. You —
perhaps because you are flattered by the great
man's confidence, perhaps because of your curi-
osity— joyfully consent. Sometimes you consent
only because you know the folly of cutting off
your ears merely because your lips are sealed.

The Washington Code was the only check to

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

speech in all that great land swamped beneath a
flood of words.

Those morning conferences became a regular
institution. We did most of the talking while
Mr. Root sat silently listening. Occasionally he
made one of those simple, pat, nut-shell com-
ments for which he has such an amazing talent,
and we regretted the "made in America" rules
for correspondents.

From time to time, special missions took flying
trips out of Petrograd to study some particular
phase of the complex situation. The military
men went to the front; the naval representatives
took in a mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet ; the bank-
ers investigated Russia's depleted treasury; and
the religiously inclined went to Moscow to dis-
cover the future status of the Russian Church.

There was no official life of any kind. When
the Commission donned its Prince Alberts and
paid its first two formal visits, they found the
Foreign Minister in a sack-suit and tan shoes and
the members of the Council dressed like working-
men. The young men of the Provisional Gov-
ernment were growing old overnight with the
burden of the task upon them. And the mem-

DIPLOMATS

bers of the Soviet were groping endlessly for
that hidden road which idealism and reality may
travel Jn equity.

Every man, from the young Minister Presi-
dent, Alexander Kerensky — whose health was
already giving way under the frightful strain of
trying to make the dilapidated economic machine
inherited from the Tsar's regime supply the ex-
haustive demands of war and revolution — to the
most insignificant little delegate in the Soviet,
was working with his sleeves rolled up to re-
mold Russia nearer to his heart's desire.

As the Soviet moved, so Russia moved. It
was the mouth-piece of the awakened masses.
Already it was the government behind the gov-
ernment. Charles Edward Russell was the only
member of the Commission who was able to get
the least bit close to the Council of Workmen's
and Soldiers' Deputies. They treated him with
more courtesy than any other official foreign
representative, though they looked upon him as
a renegade socialist.

I went with him to the Soviet one day when he
was to speak. His buttonhole flaunted the red-
dest red ribbon in Petrograd, and his white linen

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

collar, the only one in the huge assembly, was
encircled by a flaming scarlet tie. They listened
to his message, but it had no meaning for them.
He had come to Russia to help make Russia
fight, and the dream of the Russian revolutionist
was not only to stop Russia from fighting, but
to put an end to all wars. Separate peace was
no part of the revolutionary scheme. Even the
most radical members of the Soviet were play-
ing for larger stakes. Internationalism was at
the bottom of their creed, and it was not until
ten months after the fall of the Romanoffs that
I heard a revolutionist admit the possibility of
separate peace. It was at a meeting in the
Duma, when Leon Trotzky, after the armistice
negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, said:

"We have given the Allies a month to come
into the peace negotiations. Perhaps we can
give them a little more time if they need it, but
we can't go on forever. Russia is bleeding to
death, and to save her we have to get back to the
mills and the farms and the factories."

They believed that the failure of international-
ism in 1914 did not necessarily mean the failure
of internationalism in 1917, for now the interna-

DIPLOMATS

tionalists of the world had before their eyes the
example of Russia and the Russian Revolution.
The revolutionists had no hope from the German
autocracy, but they were confident that if they
could but speak loud enough, the masses of the
German people would rise and overthrow their
government, as the Russian workers, soldiers,
and peasants had done.

A few men believed, with the elder Liebknecht,
that the German people could never be free until
the German military power was defeated at arms,
and these tried frantically to continue the war.

"Peace, but not separate peace," was the
phrase on every Russian tongue.

The Root Commission realized this, and it re-
alized also that the question was not whether the
government had the will to go on fighting, but
whether it had the power. The mission was in-
terested in helping to give Russia that power.
Perhaps what it failed to realize was that Rus-
sia's spiritual needs were as great or greater
than her material needs. The thing above every-
thing else that Russia needed to keep her in the
war was a cause. Root, "battered old cam-
paigner," as he styled himself, was not unmoved

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

by the sincerity and immensity of the movement
in which Russia was engrossed. It was not his
day — it was the day of the diplomats from Hes-
ter Street. He might not agree with their judg-
ments or approve their methods, but I think he
felt himself in the presence of something big,
something epochal.

For three years, Ivan had fought desperately
in the trenches, simply because the Little Father
had told him to. Sometimes it was for love of
the Little Father that he fought. More often
it was for fear of him and his generals. More
often still it was only in response to that blind
obedience to orders which absolutism instils in
those whom it enslaves. Sometimes Ivan did not
know until he reached the big city of Petrograd
what enemy of Holy Russia it was that he must
fight.

Manpower was cheap in Russia. Russia was
correspondingly careless as to how she wasted it.
Ivan fought as no other soldier in the world is
asked to fight — fought with bare hands, fought
with pitchforks, fought with guns that he took
from the hands of comrades as they fell in battle.

One day Ivan discovered that the Tsar, in

DIPLOMATS

whom he had believed, was just a little man whom
he was able quite easily to put aside. The gen-
eral, the colonel, the captain of the regiment —
they too were little men. He need not salute
them ; he need not respect them ; he need not obey
them.

The great driving force — fear — was gone.
That greater driving force of war — a cause —
Ivan had never known. No one had bothered
to give him one. No one had cared enough.

Suddenly the facts were changed. The old
gods were swept away in a single hour. Tsar
and church and country crumbled together.
Revolution took their place. Russia had a cause.
"Save the Revolution!" became the rallying cry.
To save the Revolution, and what it meant to
each, became the common faith. However men
differed in their definition of terms, they were all
agreed as to the slogan. Russia would follow
no other flag.

Ivan was tired of war — tired to death. Being
Russian, he had no relish either for killing or for
dying; but when the occasion demanded, he did
both with a degree of resignation and despatch
that is almost Oriental. Living always in the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

shadow of danger, he acquired an indifference to
it as sublime as it is tragic. Essentially a fatal-
ist, he accepted the facts of life as they came to
him, and contented himself with thinking occa-
sionally of that day of the people off there in the
vague future when all would be different. He
was n't interested in other men's territory. Con-
stantinople had no meaning for him. He was
not naturally imperialistic or militaristic. He
wanted to govern himself and let other people
govern themselves.

Freedom had come, and he wanted desper-
ately to enjoy it, to use it to its limit and still
to save it.

Diplomatically, Germany was in the strategic
point. She pressed her advantage. She asked
Ivan to do what he wanted to do — to stop fight-
ing. The Allies asked Ivan to do what he did
not want to do — to go on fighting.

The Root Commission made it plain that, un-
derlying the whole question of aid to Russia, was
the fundamental question of whether Russia was
going to continue in the war.

The July offensive was the answer of Keren-
sky to the Allies. It was a blunder from its in--

DIPLOMATS

ception — a forced offensive for which Ivan was
not psychologically prepared. He invested no
part of his faith in it, and he chose to be shot as a
coward and traitor rather than continue it. A
few picked men went into battle and put up a
brilliant and courageous fight; but the rank and
file of the Russian soldiers were not behind them.
Ivan could no longer be driven to battle by the
whip of fear, and he had not yet come to know
Germany as a greater enemy to himself than to
the Tsar.

The Root Commission waited to see the of-
fensive well started before it left Petrograd, but
did not remain to see the tragic end.

CHAPTER III

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

WAR and revolution are irreconcilable bed-
fellows. Mars is a jealous god, demanding more
and ever more sacrifice. Revolution cries inces-
santly for larger freedom. Out in that nebulous
land, beyond the edges of civilization, for which
all nations have a common name — "the front "-
I came close, very close, to the staggering re-
ality of war. I came to know how revolution
wars on war, and war on revolution, and both on
freedom and democracy. Conflict is the char-
acteristic element of revolution, as of war.
Democracy languishes, and freedom sickens in
the midst of conflict.

On that dismal gray day when I slipped quietly
away from Petrograd, the capital was celebrating
in a mild, half-hearted fashion the offensive on
the southwestern front.

With me went Peter Bukowski, carrying in
his pockets two of those most coveted of all docu-

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

ments to the war-time correspondent — the pass
that entitles the bearer to safe-conduct into that
forbidden territory where visitors are discouraged
at the point of the bayonet. Only slightly less
important than the permits was Peter himself;
for he was my voice, my ears, and my body-
guard— though in this last capacity he proved
entirely superfluous.

Polish grandparents bequeathed to Peter a
foreign name and an aptitude for languages.
Somebody — it must have been a fairy, for every
one else disclaimed all responsibility — put a map
of Ireland on his face. Two generations of Chi-
cago, U. S. A., did the rest. The result was a
typical American, one hundred and seventy
pounds of bounding vitality, irrepressible good
nature, and plain boy. Peter won the heart of
every one from Johanna Ivanovna to the Di-
vision Chief, and paved my way from the lazaret
to the trenches. Peter, upon the night of our
departure, was torn with conflicting emotions.
The American colony was going to honor the
Fourth of July by consuming quantities of white-
bread sandwiches from the Ambassador's pantry.
Peter wanted desperately to see the 'Russian

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

front. The vision of stacks of sandwiches—
white-bread sandwiches — appeared before him,
but Peter would not be there.

We went early to the station, in the hope of
claiming two upper berths. There were no
longer any sleeping-car reservations in Russia,
but there was an unwritten law that the person
who first put his belongings into the upper berth
was entitled to sleep there, while the other oc-
cupants huddled together on the seat below or
stood in the aisles. We poked inquiring heads
into one compartment after another, but the
earlier birds, to make assurance doubly sure, had
thrown not only their baggage but their persons
in the coveted places.

When I dozed off to sleep, a girl who had fled
from Riga at the German advance was sitting
beside me. I awoke an hour later, and she was
gone. In her place was a round-faced, blue-
eyed boy drawing shiny black cavalry boots over
blue breeches with a golden stripe down each
bulging side. He looked too young for war, but
five red stripes on his sleeve proclaimed as many
wounds.

All night long the stream of life flowed in and

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

out. All night long a changing procession filed
through the compartment. Men stayed for an
hour or two, and dropped off at wayside stations.
Some, just out of the hospital, were home on sick
leave. Some were returning to their positions at
the front. All were tired — tired to death; yet
sleep was out of the question. Each man un-
folded his own scrap of story, expressed his
opinion about the war, and dropped out to make
room for another.

The boy stayed longer than the others. Peter
offered him a cigarette, and soon he was relat-
ing a round, unvarnished tale. Smirnoff Brusi-
loff was his name, and his age eighteen. He was
in school at Petrograd when the war broke out,
and he made up his mind to enlist. His father,
a Russian general, promptly ordered him to stick
to his books. He as promptly rejected parental
commands and ran away to join the army.
From his pocket he drew a handful of medals.
They were the four Orders of St. George. Each
of them marked some daredevil adventure and
hairbreadth escape. The last, the Gold Cross,
highest award in the gift of the Tsar, was given
for blowing up a railroad bridge used by the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Germans for transport of provisions and war sup-
plies.

To him, war was a great game. The abstract
ideas of revolution meant nothing. The the-
ories that were keeping his peasant brothers in
the trenches awake at night passed him by en-
tirely. "There is no sport left in fighting with
the Russian army," he said. "I am going to cut
down south and try to break into the English
lines."

He left — and toward morning there sat in his
place a simple fellow with a strange look in his
vacant eyes. He unwrapped a big hunk of black
bread, and with a pocket-knife pared off scraps
and ate them. When he had finished his break-
fast, he nodded to sleep. The soldier beside him
drew the wabbling head down to his shoulder, as
he might have done to a tired child. "The war,"
he said, laying a gentle hand on the boy's hair —
"he is not right here."

When I opened the door of the compartment
in the morning, the aisle was filled with soldiers
asleep on the floor. I picked my way over one
human bundle after another to the platform, to
negotiate the purchase of wild strawberries, bot-

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

ties of fresh milk, and prim little round bouquets
of wild flowers which the barefoot peasant chil-
dren were offering for sale.

Late that afternoon we moved into the com-
partment of a kindly colonel, with whom Peter
had made friends. We were all bound for the
same section of the front, and the only other oc-
cupant of the compartment was Corporal Kuzma,
of the proud age of fourteen. Already he had
seen two and a half years of service, and had been
twice wounded. He had a wonderful red pencil,
which he fingered affectionately as he took us
into his confidence. This pencil had been given
him by a nurse in the hospital where he had been
convalescing from his last injury.

The corporal's father, according to his story,
was a captain of staff, and his mother a first-aid
nurse. Both had been killed at the beginning of
the war. An older brother, an officer in the
army, had been killed in action; and a sister,
seventeen years old, who was a nurse, was
drowned while swimming the Niemen River to
get away from the Germans. The corporal, lone
survivor of his family, naturally joined the
army. Two promotions were the reward for

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

valor under fire. His uniform confirmed his
story.

The corporal did not say that he was pressed
for funds, but he offered to dispose of his treas-
ured red pencil for a consideration. Peter
bought it for a ruble, and presented it again.
Then the Colonel bought it for a ruble, and he
too followed the rest of Peter's example.

"But," added the Colonel, "if I ever hear of
you selling it again, I will not only take it away,
but I will have you dismissed from the army in
disgrace."

I wanted to see more of this astounding child;
but when we changed trains at the next station,
he too dropped into the stream of the procession
and disappeared.

The next part of the journey we made sitting
upon a wooden bench in a fourth-class carriage.
That night we picked up a sleeper again, and the
Colonel insisted on stowing me away in the up-
per berth, with a tiny pillow that his daughter
had made for him tucked under my head. He
confided to Peter that I was the first American
woman he had ever met.

"My father was in the army before me, and

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

my grandfather before him," he said, with a sigh ;
4 'but I am going to send my boy to America to
be educated for some other profession."

He understood the revolutionary soldier no
more than young Brusiloff did. This lusty new
thing that had come crashing into the ordered
ways of his military life, and snapped its fingers
in the face of all the traditions upon which his
world was founded, left him hurt and helpless
and bewildered. I fell asleep still listening to
his voice. The next thing I knew, it was day-
light, and he and Peter were hurrying me off
the train.

Not a note of war jarred the quiet of this land-
scape. Nothing in the wooded slopes or in the
deep meadows remotely suggested war. The
Colonel sniffed the morning air. "It smells like
the front," he said, with a sense of real satisfac-
tion.

We parted. He was to continue on the main
line for another station, while we shot off in a
different direction. The rest of the journey we
made squatting on the floor of a box-car. The
only other passengers were two soldiers and a
tiny pansy-faced girl of six with great gray eyes,

THE RED HEART OP RUSSIA

shy and wistful. She sat upon the edge of my
skirt, spread out for ithat purpose, and seriously
crunched sunflower seeds.

Our way led through fields of rye, yellowing
in the sunshine, and potato patches, green and
promising. On the edge of the distant clearing
a herd of cattle grazed, and along the road-bed
women, barefooted and in calico dresses, worked
with picks and wooden shovels. An army motor-
truck, driven by a woman, chugged across our
path.

At ten o'clock the branch line came to an end
in a cleared space in the forest, and we stepped
into a huge tent canteen with a Red Cross sign
above the door. Soldiers, a hundred or more,
slouched over the tables, slicing off hunks of black
bread with their pocket-knives, and washing the
bread down with tea drunk from tin cans. They
were of the earth, these men. Their dun clothes
were heavy with the brown mud of the trenches,
their faces weathered to the color of the soil,
their tawny hair sun-bleached. Only their eyes,
sky-blue or shining black, lifted them out of the
monotone.

One of them brought us tin cups of steaming

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

tea, and explained that he and his comrades were
just out of the first-line trenches. Peter asked
him to direct us to the lazaret, which was to pro-
vide us with sleeping quarters. He pointed to-
ward the forest, where a thin wisp of gray smoke
curled slowly up into the blue sky, and volun-
teered to take us there. We started across the
fields on foot. It was a crisp and clear morning.
A recent rain had washed and polished every
blade of grass. A little wind stirred gently the
feathery tops of the distant pines, and rippled
the field of blue corn-flowers, white buckwheat,
yellow mustard, and purple clover-bloom.

Surely this could not be war — these painted
fields, those dark, peaceful woods! The thought
had barely registered, when a dull boom! boom!
boom! came suddenly to my ears. Peter looked
at the soldier and at me.

"It 's war, all right," he said.

Beyond the first row of trees we came abruptly
upon a cluster of low frame buildings, log cabins,
and brush-covered dugouts. From the top of a
tiny log bungalow, with blue curtains at the win-
dows, an American flag was flying. A frisking
colt kicked up its heels on the edge of the clear-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing, and a flock of friendly geese came waddling
to meet us.

We stopped in front of a large building, and
a "Sister of Mercy in the Russian Red Cross uni-
form opened the door. She led the way to the
dining-room, and ordered coffee with warm milk
from the lazaret's own dairy.

Suddenly we heard a whirr above our heads.
The nurse ran to the door, excitedly motioning
to me to follow. An aeroplane, — a German
aeroplane — was outlined against the cloudless
sky. A battery opened fire to the right of us,
and another to the left. The shots came in quick
succession, like the beating of a drum. A tiny
cloud of smoke appeared in the wake of the flyer.
Another broke just above him. A third and a
fourth shell exploded below. The gunners had
missed. The German sailed safely on his de-
structive way.

"You had better get inside," said a Russian
doctor, who joined the group. "There will be a
shower of shrapnel fragments in a minute."

"We have been rather expecting an aeroplane
raid to-day," he continued, lighting a cigarette.
"Our fellows celebrated the victory on the other

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

front yesterday by peppering the Germans with
artillery fire, and we thought they might retali-
ate with bombs."

We spent the day exploring the hospital, built
upon ground once occupied by the Germans, and
from trees felled there in the forest and sawed
on the premises with a primitive two-man-power
Russian saw.

With the exception of one hospital captured
from the Austrians, there was not a more com-
plete plant along the entire length of the great
front ; and the flag flying over the tiny bungalow
had a real significance — an American was respon-
sible for that hospital.

Dr. Eugene Samuelevitch Hurd, the Russians
called him, and, though he was already on his
way to France to help his own countrymen, he
had left a record that made me realize what one
unofficial American can do in the matter of diplo-
macy. Peter and I in the days to follow had
cause to be profoundly grateful; for on this sec-
tor of the front one needed only to be American
to have all ways opened unto him.

At dinner we sat down to excellent Russian
fare: shchee (sour cabbage soup), kasha (boiled

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

buckwheat), stewed meat, potatoes, and bread at
least three shades lighter than any we had seen in
Petrograd.

After dinner, Johanna Ivanovna, head nurse
for the military hospital next door, took me for a
walk through the woods. Johanna Ivanovna
was young, fresh, and softly, sadly pretty in her
Sister's garb. She was lonesome out there on
the edge of the forest. She spoke a little English,
rusty from long disuse. She was the only per-
son in all those fields and forests who understood
even a stray word of my native language.

As we turned back toward the lazaret, a Rus-
sian rocket flashed into the western sky. It was
followed by another, and another.

"A German scouting party had been sighted
outside the barbed-wire entanglements," Johanna
Ivanovna explained from long experience at the
front. "The rockets are torches to help trace
their movements."

I slept that night on a narrow army cot in a
typical camp room, the only unfamiliar feature of
which was a strange contraption like a knapsack
hanging on the wall. It proved to be a gas-
mask, and bore the warning: "Keep your gas-

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

mask always with you — it will save your life."
I put the mask back on its nail, and turned
down the gray army blankets, to find white sheets.
My clothes had not been off for two nights, and
those sheets were alluring. My last recollection
was the sound of the low grumble of artillery on
the firing line to the west.

Division Staff Headquarters was our immedi-
ate objective next morning. A breechka, with
one horse in the shafts and another to run along-
side in the strange Russian fashion, was at the
door of the lazaret when we finished our coffee.
The road led over a hillside and through a typical
Russian village : a cluster of wooden houses hud-
dled together in the center of fields of grain and
flax. They were pitiful little homes, weather-
grayed, straw-thatched, and dilapidated. The
main street was thronged with soldiers, who had
come to buy picture post-cards, cigarettes, and
candy from the meager store. Beyond the vil-
lage we headed into the forest, bumping our way
over a military corduroy road of rough logs laid
together like the boards in a floor.

The wagon path bristled on both sides with
barbed-wire entanglements, and the woods were

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

honeycombed with trenches. They were tim-
bered with logs, and the roofs were covered with
moss and delicate wild flowers.

The sentries glanced curiously at me.
Women, even Red Cross nurses, seldom pene-
trated this far into their domain. But they al-
lowed me to pass unchallenged. We stopped in
front of an old-fashioned farm-house with a pas-
sion-vine growing over the veranda, and a rustic
summer-house built around an aged tree in the
front yard.

The General's aide came out to meet us. He
took us to the commanding officer, and we drank
tea while plans and permits were being made and
horses saddled. Once permission was granted to
visit the Russian front the military host left noth-
ing to be desired.

The General offered me his aide as a guide;
and he, Lieutenant Gusaroff , mounted me on his
beautiful black "Arabka." The pony and I cov-
ered eighteen miles through the dark forests that
day, and before I left we were thoroughly fa-
miliar with that sector of the front. Every mile
of the way was bounded by trenches running off
into the depths of the woods. Here and there

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

we passed a pine snapped in the middle as if it
had been a match, and great cavities in the earth
marked the havoc of enemy artillery fire.

We lunched with the Colonel and a group of
young officers in a log-lined dugout, with flowers
upon the table and an elaborate hanging lamp
made from pine cones suspended above it. In
one corner of the living-room was a tiny wire pen
in which three baby chickens were being carefully
reared.

Table conversation turned to the question of
the offensive on the southwestern front. Most
of the men were hopeful that it might once more
mean active participation of all the Russian
troops. Some were dubious. It was evident
that none of them liked the new committee sys-
tem of managing the army. It was hardly to be
expected that they would, for it meant a com-
plete overturn of all their training.

Many were sympathetic with the Revolution;
a few were revolutionists: but most of them
wanted revolution to behave according to their
own well ordered plan and not according to the
nature of revolution.

The quiet of the morning departed. The

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

rumble of the guns seemed quite close now.
When luncheon was over, we all mounted horses
and rode off in the direction they called. We
came to a halt on the shores of another and much
larger lake, a great inland sea nearly fifteen miles
long. The wind had lashed its surface into
whitecaps, and waves came beating noisily against
the barbed-wire entanglements that poked their
heads formidably above the water.

Here we dismounted, and they led me to an
observation station cleverly screened by trees.
Young Gusaroff adjusted the glasses and turned
them over to me; then — "Bvistra, Miss Beatty,
bvistra!" he shouted.

I looked, and at the opposite side of the lake
a great cloud of sand rose suddenly into the air.
A section of a German trench blew up in a puff
of smoke.

Stretched out before me, beyond that powerful
lens, were the Russian and German trenches.
Above the ground the barbed -wire entanglements
zigzagged across the gray hillsides. Under the
surface, facing each other with watchful eyes and
ears and ready trigger-fingers, were two long
lines of silent men.

IRRECONCILABLE BED-FELLOWS

In the reserve trenches beyond were more men

—thousands of them, talking, sleeping, playing

cards, brewing tea, living their lives like so many

ants — who were of the earth and knew no other

world.

A flotilla of tiny armored water-craft guarded
the Russian end of the lake, and between it and
the little German lake-craft was a stretch of
mined water, which either would hesitate to cross.

It was hard to realize, looking through those
glasses at the clouds of dust now on the German
side of the line, now on the Russian, that every
time the slim young lieutenant called "Bvistra!"
the reaper of battlefields was shouting a more
final command to some one or more of the dwell-
ers under the earth.

Back at staff headquarters again, we sat down
at a table with military maps spread before us.
Gusaroff was an engineer, and loved every line
of the complicated maps.

"If we had had enough ammunition in 1915 you
would not have to be fighting to-day," he said.

"Here" — pointing to a spot in Poland now in
the possession of the Germans — "sixteen thou-
sand of us went into battle in 1915, and only five

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

hundred of us returned. The artillery retreated,
not because it did not want to go on fighting—
not because it was beaten — but because it had
only two rounds of ammunition left."

He moved his finger to another point on the
map. "There is a hill here," he said, "which our
men charged forty-eight times. On the forty-
ninth attack there were only four survivors out of
three thousand, and they shot themselves rather
than surrender to the Germans. Reserves ar-
rived in time to rescue the situation, but too late
to save the men."

"Yes," said another officer; "if we had had the
ammunition in 1915, 1 would be back with Mother
Moscow, practising law, and all this business
would be over. What will happen now— I don't
know. It is very bad.

"War and revolution do not get on well to-
gether; yet we younger men realize that revolu-
tion had to come. Things could not go on as
they were."

CHAPTER IV

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

WAR as Russia has known it, war as they know
it on the western front, is a different thing from
war as I saw it made in the dark forests in July.
Yet war as it came to me in flashes was real and
terrible enough to fix itself everlastingly.

One afternoon I sat in a bomb-proof observa-
tion station and looked through a tiny round hole
across a narrow strip of sand-dunes to a tangle
of barbed wire. No Man's Land lay like a bone
between two hungry dogs. Less than two hun-
dred feet away, beyond that last strand of vicious
metal, were the Germans.

I sat there, trying to believe it — trying to re-
alize that here, a few steps distant, so close that
I could almost reach out my hands and touch
them, were the fighting forces of the man who
stands to most of the civilized world as the arch-
enemy of liberty and peace.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Suddenly my wandering mind stopped short.
Two black specks appeared for a moment above
that metal line. On the instant two rifles cracked
— short, sharp, and final.

The specks were gone. I caught my breath.
It could not be true ! I had imagined it.

The officer beside me was speaking. I had
not heard. I begged his pardon abstractedly,
and he repeated:

"A couple of Germans put their heads over
the trench — bad thing to do."

When I returned to the Colonel's headquar-
ters a few minutes later, I found him surrounded
by soldiers beaming with pleasure and being
beamed upon in return. The Colonel, a stocky
little man, brisk and alert, introduced me to his
men, and pointed to a section of barbed-wire en-
tanglement that they had just brought in. It
was not the crude Russian entanglement fash-
ioned from crossed logs sawed from the forest,
but the made-in-Germany kind with slender port-
able metal standards, easy to fold and easy to
carry. Under cover of the darkness of the night
before, they had brazenly helped themselves to
this sample of German efficiency, and before the

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

enemy awoke to the situation the successful
raiders were chuckling happily in safety in their
trenches.

When darkness came again, the scouting party
once more ventured forth; and this time, after a
short sharp fight, they came back bringing a
German with a shattered hip — left by his com-
rades to die.

The prisoner, a lad of eighteen, was from
Dresden, and he told me it was his first night in
the front-line trenches. I saw him on a cot in
the Siberian Hospital the next day. At the foot
of his bed sat a Russian officer, plying him with
questions and filling long sheets of foolscap with
the answers. Occasionally the boy turned his
head to the pillow and sobbed with pain and ex-
haustion. The nurse looked at him compas-
sionately.

"Heaven knows, I don't like the Germans/'
she said, "but I can't help feeling sorry for that
boy. He is suffering terribly."

A woman doctor stepped up to the officer.

"He can stand no more," she said.

I stooped to brush the flies from his feet
tuck the sheets around them. He looked

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

me and managed a feeble and a grateful English
"Thank you."

The next night a deserter was brought in. He
was from Alsace. He told us that the Alsatians
in the trenches were alternated with Germans or-
dered to watch them. In addition, a German
officer continually patrolled the rear of the line.
It was raining, and the officer was apparently
less vigilant. The man watched his chance, and
slipped away under cover of the storm.

Johanna Ivanovna, Peter, and I went fre-
quently in the evenings to a near-by village where
a young Cossack captain, Vasaili Pestrakoff , and
a command of a hundred men operated an anti-
aircraft battery. The Captain was a living de-
nial of all my preconceived ideas of Cossacks.
He was quiet and serious and almost puritanical
in his denunciation of the moral code preached
and practised by some of his brother officers.

One evening we found the regimental band
drawn up outside the entrance to the village. It
was St. John's Day, and the occupants of the
straw-thatched huts were out in the brightest and
best calico clothes their meager wardrobes per-
mitted. All of the soldiers within walking dis-

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

tance of the battery were there. When they saw
us coming, the band proudly played an Ameri-
can march — "in-honor of the Amerikanka," ex-
plained Johanna Ivanovna. A Russian waltz
followed, then a lively peasant tune.

Russia has danced little since the war, but the
music was a real temptation. A soldier grabbed
a barefoot woman and whirled her into the circle.
Another followed his example, then another, and
another. The women danced with flying feet
and tragic faces. Three years of living in con-
stant apprehension, fleeing from home in terror
and straggling back again to take up life within
sound of enemy guns, had painted fear and resig-
nation into their great, soft eyes. The children
huddled together in a group on the edge of the
ring, peeping shyly up at me from under their
kerchiefs when curiosity got the better of timid-
ity. The telephone had tinkled out the informa-
tion that three enemy aeroplanes were headed
that way, and while the crowd danced the Cos-
sack Captain's observers searched the heavens
with powerful glasses.

The band struck up the Russian Mazurka, and
Captain Pestrakoff, at the urging of his soldiers,

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

whirled me into the circle. One and another of
the dancers dropped out and marked time on the
side-lines. The Russian steps were as strange to
my feet as the language was strange to my ears,
but the music was irresistible. What relation
there was between what we danced and the Rus-
sian Mazurka I do not know; but we danced and
the crowd cheered. Suddenly the Captain be-
came conscious that we were alone in the circle.
He colored and abruptly stopped. Half a dozen
men grabbed him up on their shoulders and tossed
him in the air again and again. A dashing little
soldier from the Ural Mountains caught me and
whirled me through a succession of spirited steps
to the end of the music.

As I left the crowd, another soldier saluted and
slipped something into my hand with a shy posh'
alasta (please). I looked down and found two
tiny emblems, the crossed wings and propellers
of the aviation corps, cleverly fashioned from the
aluminum cap of a German shell.

The telephone tinkled the news that the enemy
aeroplanes were avoiding the battery, and had
passed far to the south. From the dance we went
to the Captain's brown canvas palaika (tent),

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

where a tiny brass samovar bubbled. There was
candy from Moscow, an almost unheard-of lux-
ury in those days, and wild blueberries gathered
by the villagers and presented in gratitude for
the security that the Captain was bringing. I
noticed a balalika in one corner, and at our urg-
ing our host clicked off the favorite folk-songs of
the Don Cossacks.

The following night we were again drinking
tea in the little palatka. The hour was late.
The sky was hung with clouds. A drizzle pat-
tered on the canvas roof. It was the last pos-
sible time and place to expect an aerial caller.
The Captain jumped suddenly from his chair.

"We have a visitor," he said.

"What?" asked Peter.

"There is an aeroplane in the vicinity," he said.

We listened, but our untrained ears distin-
guished nothing but the rain on the roof. We
followed the Captain to the square. Deserted a
moment before, it was now filling quickly with
barefoot men in various stages of night-dress.
The Captain ordered all lights in the village out,
and sent the men — who were targets in their
white night-clothes — back to dress. He gave

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the command to load the guns and stand ready.

In low tones the men speculated as to whether
they were in for a bomb attack on the battery or
a Zeppelin raid on the railway junction. By this
time the purr of the motor was audible even to
Peter and to me. Alternatives were discussed
in whispers. The Captain might fire a random
shot; but if it were a bomb attack, this would
merely disclose the position of the battery. He
waited and said nothing.

A deathly hush fell upon the square. For an
interminable half-hour we listened to the hum-
ming of the motor, momentarily expecting a mes-
sage from the bird-man and quite oblivious of
the softly falling rain. Then gradually the
sound diminished in volume, and finally ceased
altogether. The rat-tat-tat of the machine-gun
of the adjoining battery announced that the fate
of the visitor had passed beyond the possible con-
trol of our Captain. We went back to the samo-
var and fresh glasses of tea.

Fair weather had departed. The crisp, clear
days of blue and gold were gone. Rain came
down in torrents, and dry boots and I became ut-
ter strangers. The first wet day I spent in the

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

hospital. In the morning I slipped on a nurse's
smock and went to the surgery.

It was not war out there in the moonlight.
The tinkling telephones, the captured Austrian
machine-gun, the cellar full of American ammuni-
tion,— even the whirring of the motors and the
boom of the guns to the west, — could not make it
seem real. But here in the surgery were shat-
tered bones and tortured flesh, the agonized faces
of patient men, and the terrible stench of gan-
grene. This was war.

The first anguished cry of "Gaspadin docteur"
sent me to the operating-table. It was impossi-
ble to stay in that room and do nothing. I put
my first-aid knowledge timidly to work, and be-
fore the morning was over two or three patients
were calling me "Sestra" and taxing my meager
knowledge of Russian and my intuition to its
limit. Once the doctor beckoned me to look at a
horrible mass of decayed flesh that had been a

leg.

"Dum-dum bullet," he told me.

At luncheon Peter was in high spirits. War
had taken hold of his imagination. He saw it as
a great game.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"You 'd better see the surgery," I suggested.

He refused, but he spent the afternoon with
me in the hospital wards, to which we took a sup-
ply of cigarettes and matches.

All of Russia was gathered under that roof.
There were Little Russians, merry-souled chaps,
blue-eyed and fair-haired, who came from a land
where the sun shines much and the earth yields
plentifully. There were Veliko'rus, or Big Rus-
sians, inured to hardship, their sterner struggle
with the soil photographed upon their determined
faces. Scattered among them were fair-haired
Cossacks from the Don and dark-skinned Cos-
sacks from the Urals with a strain of Tartar
marked in the slant of their eyes and the color of
their skin. Sometimes it was an Esthonian who
looked up from the pillow, a Pole, a Lett, a
Lithuanian, or a member of one of the numerous
Caucasian or Siberian tribes. There were three
who stood above the others : Hamid Galli, Vasilli,
and Ivan Markovitch.

Hamid Galli had a great joke on himself. All
day long he lay on his back and laughed about it.
He laughed with his eyes, black and shining like
jet beads, and with his mouth, spread wide across

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

a row of gleaming white teeth. He was a Cos-
sack from the Urals, small, brown, and wiry.
He and his pony from the Urals, wiry, dark, and
spirited like the master himself, had been at the
front for three years. Time after time they had
both gone into that mad rush of man and horse
and steel called a cavalry charge, and come out
without a scratch. Three weeks before, the pony
had climbed up on his hind legs and toppled his
master off. For a Cossack to be thrown from
any horse is either a swearing or a laughing mat-
ter. Hamid Galli swore, then he tried to pick
himself up. To his amazement, he could not
move. His leg was broken — broken by his own
pony. To Hamid Galli that was a hundred-per-
cent, joke. He began to laugh. He was still
laughing when the stretcher-bearers carried him
away. He laughed while the doctor was setting
it. And the nurse told me that even in the night,
when the ache of it kept him awake, he laughed
quietly to himself.

Vasilli, who was in the next bed, smiled also;
but Vasilli's smile was the feeble effort of blood-
less lips and trusting blue eyes, deep sunken from
long suffering. Vasilli's smile was the courage-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ous effort of the spirit, and there was no mirth
behind it. Vasilli's deathly white hand rested on
the bandaged stump of a once serviceable young
leg.

One day they wheeled him in to the operating-
table, where the doctor was coming to dress his
wounds. Vasilli had had one previous experi-
ence with operating-tables. A frightened look
came into his eyes. He said nothing until the
doctor left the room; then in a whisper to the
nurse :

"Seestra, is he going to cut off my other leg?"

"No, no; he is going to dress your leg to make
you feel more comfortable," she answered.

The feeble, patient smile crept into Vasilli's
blue eyes.

"Is n't he good to me?" he said.

Ivan Markovitch, in the ward beyond, neither
smiled nor laughed. Ivan lay on the pillow, his
face ghastly gray and his breath coming in short,
quick gasps. When Peter offered him ciga-
rettes, he shook his head, and we had to stoop low
over the bed to catch the faint words that came in
whispers from his lips.

In the whole wide world Ivan could find no

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

cause for laughing. He had tuberculosis; and
the pity in the eyes of the sister, when she looked
at him, confirmed my worst fears.

Ivan was twenty, and the only boy in a large
family of girls. His people were peasant farm-
ers, and until he was drafted for a soldier, he
spent all his days in the fields, cultivating the
hemp and flax and planting potatoes. The win-
ter before in the trenches he took cold. His
lungs began to pain, and he applied several times
to be allowed to see the doctor.

"It was before the Revolution," he whispered.
"They would n't listen to me. The officers told
me to go back to my regiment where I belonged.
Now look at me."

Peter said something intended to be cheering;
but there was a note in the voice of the American
boy of the bubbling spirits that I had not heard
there before.

Two days later I met Ivan's nurse coming from
the field with her arms full of white daisies.

We took them, wet with raindrops, and made
a wreath and a long garland, and when we had
finished we went to the crude little chapel on the
edge of the wood.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Leaning against the wall was a wooden cross,
sawed that morning from a freshly cut pine. In-
side, the light from a tiny altar lamp fell across
a white pine coffin and upon the face of Ivan.
We arranged the garland upon the coffin, and
tied a bow of white gauze on the wreath. Then
we stood back and looked silently a minute at
the peasant boy from the distant country who
had not lived to know either the joys or the limi-
tations of freedom.

Two other nurses slipped through the door and
stood beside us. Tears came into the eyes of
one and another, and they gave me a strip of
white gauze because I had forgotten my hand-
kerchief.

It was a common language that we spoke — the
only one we had in common.

Ivan was Ivan, to us : a peasant boy who died
in the years of his strength and youth, alone and
far from home. Ivan was all the boys of the
world to each of us, and a special boy or two in
some particular corner of the world.

I doubt if I could have danced that night,
however tempting the music or importune the
partner. Yet one must dance ! The sun and the

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

moon rise and the current of life flows on,
heedless of tortured flesh, unmindful who lies
dying.

For two days I stayed away from the trenches.
The rain oozed through the cracks in the rough
pine boards in my room and spread in puddles
over the floor. It showed no signs of ceasing.
One morning, regardless of Peter's protest, we
set out to cover the three miles to the staff. A
very much astonished young Russian met us at
the door.

"How did you get here?" he asked.

I explained that we had come with much ease
and some exhilaration on our own feet, and were
none the worse for the walk.

"But surely you don't want to go to the
trenches on a day like this ! You will be up to
your knees in mud. You can't imagine what it
is like," he said.

"I have a very strong desire to find out at first
hand," I answered.

He consulted two brother officers, who in turn
consulted the telephone.

Finally they decided: "It is possible, but
foolish."

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Still smiling, but frowning indulgently upon
me, they put me in the General's big gray mo-
tor-car, and we started for the forest.

Twice the heavy car stuck in the mud, and
Lieutenant Gustaroff told me to tell my govern-
ment to send some American Fords parcels post.

Just as we reached headquarters the sun came
slashing through the heavy clouds, and for three
hours the downpour ceased.

The officers were waiting for us, curious to see
these strange Americans who did n't stay indoors
when it rained. We made our way through
sandy trench roads, untimbered ditches bordered
with shaggy lavender poppies, green oats, and
blue cornflowers clinging close to their sloping
sides. Then we went into the trenches. There
were miles and miles of them, zigzagging back
and forth like the Greek border on a guest towel.
At intervals big metal plates were placed near
the top, flanked on each side by sand-bags.
Through the observation holes I peeped out on
No Man's Land with the barbed-wire entangle-
ments of the Germans beyond. Once they told
me we were within a hundred and sixty feet of
the enemy's first-line trench.

Blessing of the banners of the Battalion of Death

The Woman's Regiment on review before its departure for the trenches

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

Our friends at the staff had not exaggerated
the mud. The first time we came to a puddle,
one of the officers lifted me up in his arms and
carried me over. I protested that I was pre-
pared for mud and did not mind it. Not under-
standing, he paid no attention. While I con-
tinued to protest, he carried me across three other
puddles. Soon puddles disappeared — the trench
became a continuous river of red mud. I es-
caped, and plunged in up to the top of my high
boots.

Twice we lost our way in communication-
trenches and had to retrace our steps. Intermit-
tent artillery fire punctuated the journey, and
an officer who spoke a little English taught me
to distinguish between "Baba-yaga" and the
"flutes," the "trunks" and the "suit-cases."

The big twelve-inch shells that carried whole-
sale destruction to the soldier and his carefully
built trenches were named after the evil old Rus-
sian witch. The two-inch shell, whizzing through
the air with a shrill whistle, was the flute. The
nine- and ten-inch shells were trunks and suit-
cases.

At one point we discovered that a "suit-case"

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

had preceded us and caved in the timbers. Once,
when the lay of the land permitted, I was al-
lowed to put my head over the trench to see the
remains of a Russian village. All that was left
were the skeletons of two Russian brick stoves
and their chimneys.

Electric light and kindred comforts such as
they have in the enemy trenches were utterly
lacking here. Mud! Mud! Here was noth-
ing but mud ! In one small trench-house — a bur-
row in the ground in the back- wall of the trench
—three soldiers were playing cards ; another was
washing his shirt. Here and there we found
men polishing their guns, and others brewing tea
in aluminum pails over tiny fires. More of them
were snatching a little sleep in order to be vigi-
lant for the night.

Though none of them saluted the officers, there
seemed little to indicate disorganization here ; but
the commanding Colonel told me that some of his
men had deserted, and more were sick. Scurvy
was making frightful inroads in the Russian
ranks on every front, and to the north, in the
vicinity of Riga, the men were in a pathetic con-
dition as a result of poor food.

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

The dirt, the flies, the vermin, the monotonous
round, the endless soup and kasha, the waiting —
these are the things that take the last ounce of a
man's courage and faith. The Russian, like the
Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Belgian,
had had three years of it. The others knew for
what they fought. Each had a cause; each had
a country standing behind him and trying to send
some fragment of comfort into his meager life.
The Russian went to the front and stayed there
simply because he was told to. It was tragic that
he should be leaving his trenches, but it was un-
derstandable.

The danger of warfare made little impression
on me that afternoon, but I came out knowing
that men who have stood three years of trench
life, whether they be English, French, Italian,
Russian, or any other, can not be dismissed as
"cowards" by those who stay at home. An hour
later eight of us were gathered at dinner in the
officers' mess. The Colonel had just asked for
a second helping. Suddenly, as one man, we
dropped our forks and listened. Boom! Boom!
Boom! The big guns crashed in our ears.
Baba-yaga, the flutes, the trunks, the suit-cases

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

— all of them at once. The sounds of the after-
noon were like silence in comparison. Two men
rose and hurried away. The Colonel left his
plate untouched.

One of the officers hurried back and said some-
thing in Russian to his commanding officer. He
turned to me.

"You got out just in time," he said. "They
are bombarding the trenches — down where you

were."

And this was war! I had seen the trenches-
walked safely through them with men whose
chief concern was that I, a woman, should not
get my feet wet. Hardly an hour later, the
guns of the enemy were crashing them to pieces.

Always the German was there, waiting, play-
ing the diabolical game of war just as effectively
in the silence as when the guns were pounding
death into the trenches. Sometimes it was a
newspaper printed in Russian that found its way
down from Berlin and into the Russian trenches ;
sometimes it was a proclamation signed by Ger-
man soldiers. The newspaper contained ac-
counts of British and French defeats and Ger-

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

man victories, with profuse proffers of aid
sprinkled through its news item.

"You are finished, Russia, but we will try to
help you," one of them read. "It will be good
for you and good for us to make a separate peace.
We are not your enemies. We do not want to
spoil your Revolution. We want to help you
save it."

One afternoon, while a crowd of us were sit-
ting at tea in the officers' dug-out not far from
the front-line trenches, a soldier appeared at the
door and called the commanding Colonel out.
When the Colonel returned he had a sheet of
yellowish paper covered on both sides with neat
Russian script. A scouting party outside the
barbed-wire entanglement had suddenly come
upon a group of Germans hiding in a hole in the
sand. The Russians expected to be fired upon,
but instead the Germans ran up a white flag and
motioned them to come forward.

"This," said the Colonel, "is what they gave
them."

It was a German proclamation, compiled with
thorough knowledge of the psychology of the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Russian soldier. The Colonel read it aloud,
pausing between sentences to permit Peter to
translate.

"Russian soldiers!" [he began]. "The chief com-
mander of the Western Army tells you that the army
of the southwest front has broken our lines and achieved
a great victory, and that we are defeated. This vic-
tory is called the beginning of a fight upon the outcome
of which depends the freedom of the Russian people.
Asking you not to be traitors, he tells you that you
must defend the freedom, the fortune, and the honor of
the Russian nation.

"All this is not true. Our lines were not broken.
They are very strong, and the divisions were forced to
retreat with losses greater than ever before.

"It is known that the Russian soldier is always ready
to shed his blood, but it is also known that your com-
manders shed your blood for causes that are not worth
it — for ideals that can never compensate for loss of
life on the field of battle.

"We presume that you have not forgotten the place
of the people's sacrifice ! The order of the commander
of the western front is interesting because it does not
correspond with what is printed in your papers.

"Have you forgotten what was said on the day of
the Holy Easter? That represented the holy ideal
of the Russian Revolution. It seems that peace, a gen-
eral honorable peace, without war and indemnities, is
the ideal of the Russian people and was the cause of
the fall of Nicholas. This advance, these horrors,
seem the only result of the sacrifice of those who sleep
in the brothers' sepulcher.

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

"Do you hear the cry of the suffering workmen?
Do you hear the cry of the blood of the soldiers ?' Does
this appear to be your wish for peace ?

"Has the blood of the Revolution been spilt for
nothing? The sacrfice of blood was little to what will
now be spilt.

"Freed from the old regime, you have fallen into the
hands of the English, French, and Americans. Re-
member, we welcomed your freedom, did not interfere
with your internal affairs, and offered you a brother's
hand. We offered you peace and asked you to send
representatives from your government to talk over
peace. Swindled and bought by English gold, you re-
fused to believe us, but in numberless instances your
brothers have proved the historical fact: We are not
your enemies. We do not wish you to perish, or your
freedom.

"Those who fear separate peace furnish you with
money and all kinds of material, and all this is a proof
of your unbelief in us, which will bring you to your
ruin. We stand firm and quiet, and await your ad-
vance. The advance of English and French has been
defeated, and we will also defeat you.

"THE GERMAN SOLDIERS."

"How shall you answer it?" I asked, when the
Colonel had finished.

A lieutenant from Moscow, whom we had
christened enfant terrible because of his bound-
ing spirits and irrepressible pranks, raised his
arms to imitate an aimed gun.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"Boom! Boom! Boom! we shall answer
them," he said.

But it was not so easily done as said. Those
verbal gas-bombs, falling upon the simple, trust-
ing mind of the Russian soldier, worked more
havoc than heavy artillery and hand-grenade.

"My men are behaving pretty well, but I
would n't dare order an offensive," one of the gen-
erals told me, just before I left the front.

The hereditary distrust between the officer class
and the private was growing continually. Old
and ancient grievances were unforgotten, and,
as always, ^many of the innocent paid the price
of the guilty. There were all kinds of Russian
officers, just as there were all kinds of common
soldiers. The soldiers were sometimes undis-
criminating, even as the officers in their day of
absolutism had been undiscriminating.

The memory of punitive expeditions that fol-
lowed the Revolution of 1905, when thousands
upon thousands of revolutionists were shot and
sometimes brutally tortured by order of Russian
officers without even the pretense of a trial, still
lingered. The soldiers generally looked upon
their officers as the natural enemies of revolution,

SPECKS ON THE HORIZON

and regarded orders with suspicion. Tragedy
followed tragedy on the Russian front, and en-
emy treachery and pitiful misunderstanding on
all sides were chiefly to blame.

Militarism was a product of autocracy, and the
Russian front, at terrible cost, demonstrated that
the larger freedom and the militaristic ideal can
not live in the same world. The Russian revolu-
tionist knew this. He knew in the summer of
1917 that freedoms, large or small, were not safe,
in Russia or elsewhere, as long as one militaristic
power lived to menace the others. He knew that
the sword of militarism must be broken beneath
the feet of the peace-hungry multitudes of the
world before even the most limited of the free-
doms are safe.

What the Russian did not know was that his
brothers in Germany are themselves enslaved to
the military ideal, and that the only way to win
freedom is to defeat them and the power that
keeps them in bondage. He did not realize that
the only way to give constructive Germany back
to the world is to destroy destructive Germany.

CHAPTER V

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

NEWS — even bad news — travels slowly in Rus-
sia.

When Sidor Petroff pushed open the door of
Bachkarova's forlorn little meat-shop one frosty
March morning in 1915, Bachkaroff had already
been dead three months.

Marie Bachkarova was slicing off a hunk of
sausage for the boy Vashka, whose father was
killed in the first clash of Russian flesh and Ger-
man arms. She looked up and saw Petroff
standing there, leaning on his crutches.

Something colder than the chill wind from the
snow-covered street crept into the heart of Marie
Bachkarova. The knife fell from her hand and
clattered heavily to the meat-block. Her gray
eyes opened wide in one flash of horror. They
closed and opened again, dull and dumb with
misery.

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

The boy Vashka, who had seen news come to
the village before on crutches, slipped quietly out
of the shop without his sausage.

When Sidor Petroff hobbled away a few min-
utes later to show his old friends the Cross of St.
George glistening on his trench-grimed soldier
blouse, he was unaware that Destiny had walked
a bit of the way with him that morning.

Destiny, marshaling her forces for a campaign
against another group of ancient fetishes and
cherished ideals, had allotted him a small but sig-
nificant part in her project. Destiny, out in that
desolate village of weather-grayed log houses,
was preparing a shock that would be felt beyond
the birch-wood forests and the Siberian steppes.

Destiny was preparing the most amazing sin-
gle phenomenon of the war — the woman soldier.
Not the isolated individual woman who has
buckled on a sword and shouldered a gun through
the pages of history, but the woman soldier
banded and fighting en masse — machine-gun
companies of her, battalions of her, scouting
parties of her, whole regiments of her.

From the anti-suffragist Destiny was going to
take forever his ancient and overworked formula:

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"Women can not bear arms! Therefore they
should not vote."

From the feminist she was about to take her
most triumphant retort : "Women don't need to
bear arms — they bear soldiers."

Against the fervid faith of the Pacifist — that
"women, who pay such a terrible price to give
life will never be able to take it away" — she was
preparing to drive her saddest and bitterest blow.

Destiny, in short, was about to bring confu-
sion upon the tidy pigeonholes in which we keep
our firm convictions ready for all emergencies.

Marie Bachkarova, the crude, illiterate peas-
ant woman whom Destiny had chosen for the big
part, was as ignorant as Sidor Petroff of the im-
portance of the moment.

She could barely write; but that night labori-
ously she penned a letter.

The desolation of her life must have crept into
her crude appeal. Somebody answered with
permission to join a regiment of men forming in
the vicinity of Tomsk.

From that day, Marie Bachkarova became
simply "Bachkarova."

Her woman's name and her long brown braids

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

went first. She changed her trailing skirt with
the ruffle on the bottom for soldier's breeches
tucked into the tops of high black boots. A
vizored cap daringly replaced her folded ker-
chief, and the transformation was complete.

The strength and breadth, and the deep, full-
toned voice of a man, were hers. Passing her
on the street, you had to look three times to make
sure she was not a man. After the first few days
of grumbling protest, her comrades seldom re-
membered she was a woman.

In the two years that followed, Bachkarova
was three times wounded, still Destiny kept her
deeper purposes concealed.

One spring day in 1917, when Bachkarova was
lying on a cot in a military hospital, a shrapnel
bullet-hole as big as a man's fist in her back, some
one brought news of desertions in the army.

"The men won't fight," said the Red Cross
nurse, laying fresh gauze upon the wound.
"They are a pack of cowards. They are drunk
with freedom."

It was not altogether the truth : for every deed
of ignorance and cowardice, the Russian front
has registered one of heroism. But Destiny does

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

not stop for anything so complex as absolute
truth. She lingered at Bachkarova's bedside
that afternoon long enough to do her work.

"The men won't fight," said Bachkarova to
herself. "The men won't fight!" she repeated.
Then, suddenly forgetful of the hole in her back,
she raised herself quickly from the pillow.

"Women — women will fight!" she said.

Exhausted, she fell back on her pillow. She
had her big idea. It was the idea that produced
one of the most pathetic and most dramatic facts
of the Russian summer of 1917.

On an afternoon in early June, two years and
three months from the day that Sidor Petroff
hobbled on crutches into the meat- shop to tell
Marie Bachkarova that her husband was dead,
Bachkarova, illiterate peasant woman from an
obscure Siberian village, knelt in the great square
in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Petrograd,
while the priests sprinkled holy water, and thou-
sands of necks craned for a glimpse of her. On
that day she became a full-fledged officer of the
Russian Army — the first woman officer in the
world.

Her command, two hundred and fifty young

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

soldier women, stood at attention while three gen-
erals of high rank buckled on her sword, and,
after their fashion with brother officers, kissed
her on both cheeks.

Into the keeping of Orlova they gave a proud
gold-and- white banner. It was a gift from
Kerensky, and from its standards fluttered the
colors of the Battalion of Death. On each girl's
sleeve were the same distinguishing marks — red
"for the Revolution that must not die," and black
"for a death that is preferable to dishonor for
Russia."

Everything in Russia begins with a proclama-
tion. The women soldiers fired three verbal vol-
leys before they even saw their first round of am-
munition. The first was an appeal to Russian
women.

"Come with us in the name of your fallen he-
roes," they said. "Come with us to dry the tears
and heal the wounds of Russia. Protect her with
your lives."

To the soldier they said:

"Our hearts are about to give up their last
hope. We weak women are turning into very
tigresses to protect our children from a shameful

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

yoke — to protect the freedom of our country.
Woe unto you when we shall look upon you with
contempt!"

To the deserters they said:

"Wake up and see clear, you who are selling
the bread of your children to the Germans.
Soon, very soon, you will prefer to face ten Ger-
man bayonets to one tigress. We pour out our
maledictions upon you. Enough of words! It
is time to take to arms. Only with a storm of
fire will we sweep the enemy off Russian soil.
Only with bayonets will we obtain a permanent
peace. Forward against the enemy ! We go to
die with you!"

Equipped as infantry, fully armed, rolled
blanket-coats swung across their shoulders, the
first woman's regiment in the world left Petro-
grad.

At their head was Bachkarova, the peasant.
Beside her marched Marya Skridlova, the aristo-
crat, aide-de-camp, tall and patrician, daughter
of a famous Russian admiral and Minister of
Marine.

Bearing the banner of white and gold came
Orlova, big and stron'g, head erect, and deep,

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

serious gray eyes looking straight ahead at a
vision in which the cheering multitudes in the
streets of Petrograd played no part. Orlova's
eyes were fixed on death. She wanted to die for
Holy Russia. She had her wish. Three weeks
later she carried her colors into battle, and fell
before the first shell that broke across the Ger-
man line.

Destiny permitted that for the better part of
a week I might share the wooden boards and
soup and kasha of these soldier women.

Late on a dreary, rainy night, I dropped off a
troop-train at the military station of Malo-
detchna, and prepared to wait for dawn to show
me the way to the headquarters of the Women's
Battalion. I had that day plowed through miles
of trenches, with the red mud oozing over my
shoe-tops, and I was taking into barracks with
me some recently acquired and very definite im-
pressions of the horrors of war.

Many times in the days that followed, as I
came to terms of friendship with one and another
of these soldier girls, I thought of the line of
barbed wire bounding No Man's Land, and of
the German steel waiting behind to sink itself

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

into the soft, warm flesh of my companions'.

More often still, I shuddered at the idea that
these girls with big eyes and clear open hearts
were going out to kill; for I was among those
whose pigeonholes held a fond faith in the com-
ing of the day when women would bear neither
arms nor soldiers, but a race of human beings
gifted with the fine art of living together in peace
and amity.

Here were women — two hundred and fifty of
them — on their way to battle, and just a fraction
of the women's army soon to be.

Destiny, dawn, and an occasional inquiry led
me at six o'clock in the morning to their door.
They were housed in two pine-board sheds, sand-
wiched between a dug-out full of Austrian pris-
oners and the barracks of a battalion of Cossack
cavalry.

I found myself in a building a hundred or more
feet long, with steep roofs sloping to the floor,
and just enough width to allow for two shelves
eight feet deep and an aisle between. The
shelves at the moment were covered with brown
bundles, and as I followed the sentry a hundred
close-cropped heads emerged from them.

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

Above my head, hanging from the rafters, was
a jungle of gas-masks and wet laundry, boots,
water-bottles, and kit-bags. Beside each girl
lay her rifle. At the far end of the barracks we
stopped before one of the brown bundles, and the
sentry announced, "Gaspadin Nachalnik." The
man's head and man's shoulders of Bachkarova
arose from the blanket. Next to her, another
bundle stirred, and Marya Skridlova, aide-de-
camp, moved over and invited me to come up.

In that spot, between the social poles of Rus-
sia, Rheta Childe Dorr and I spent all the nights
and most of the days in the week that followed.

Without delay I changed my too feminine
dress for "overettes," and established myself as
unobtrusively as possible in the life of the bar-
racks.

Soon the brown bundles were all up and shed-
ding unbleached muslin pajamas for their soldier
uniforms. Once dressed, they tumbled out into
the rain, and lined up with their brother soldiers
from the other barracks to fill their pails with
hot water from the common kitchen.

We ate our breakfast sitting on the edge of a
bunk, slicing off hunks of black bread, asid wash-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing it down with tea from tin cups. Bachkarova
sat next to me, eating sardines from a can and
wiping her greasy fingers on the front of her
blouse. Orlova spent most of her time washing
these blouses, in a vain attempt to keep the Com-
mander clean.

The routine of the day began with the reading
of the army regulations. The women soldiers
had chosen to submit to the stern discipline of
the Russian army in the days before the Revolu-
tion. The ceaseless rain made drilling in the
field impossible, but within the narrow limits of
the barracks they marched back and forth, count-
ing "Ras, dva, tri, chetiri; ras, dva, tri, chetiri,"
for several hours a day.

Very soon one soldier girl after another de-
tached herself from the mass and became to me
an individual — a warm, personal human being.
Bit by bit I gathered their stories. Little by
little I discovered some of the forces that had
pushed them out of their individual ruts into the
mad maelstrom of war.

There were stenographers and dressmakers
among them, servants and factory hands, uni-
versity students and peasants, and a few who in

100

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

the days before the war had been merely para-
sites. Several were Red Cross nurses, and one,
the oldest member of the regiment, a woman of
forty-eight whose closely cropped hair was turn-
ing gray, had exchanged a lucrative medical prac-
tice for a soldier's uniform.

Many had joined the regiment because they
sincerely believed that the honor and even the
existence of Russia were at stake, and nothing
but a great human sacrifice could save her.
Some, like Bachkarova, in the days of the Si-
berian village had simply come to the point where
anything was better than the dreary drudgery
and the drearier waiting of life as they lived it.

Personal sorrow had driven some of them out
of their homes and on to the battle-line. One
girl, a Japanese, said tragically, when I asked
her reason for joining: "My reasons are so
many that I would rather not tell them."

There was a Cossack girl from the Ural Moun-
tains, fifteen years old, with soft, brown, ques-
tioning eyes, and deep, rich color tinting her dark
cheeks. Her father and two brothers had been
killed early in the war. Soon after, her mother,
who was a nurse, had died from the effects of a

101

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

German bomb thrown upon the hospital where
she was working. The girl was absolutely alone
in the world.

"What else is left for me?" she asked, with a
pathetic droop to her strong young shoulders.

Two girls, Red Cross nurses, who had already
been decorated four or five times for service to
their country, said they had seen too many brave
men suffer and die for Russia to be willing to
see her sacrificed now on the Kaiser's altar.

There was a lonesome little girl, named Leana,
whose big brown eyes, wide and questioning, will
always come back to me when I think of women
and war. She was a Pole, and had fled from
Warsaw before the advancing Germans. She
was sixteen years old, and far more hungry for
love than for killing. She had the ways of a
child, and, though we had no common language
but that of the heart, we became fast friends.
She used to slip her arm around me, and we
would walk up and down the barracks, never
speaking, but understanding quite as well as if
we had many words. Sometimes, when I looked
at her and realized that all her potentialities

108

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

would be wasted out there on the battlefield, my
eyes filled with tears.

They had come for many reasons, these women
soldiers, but all of them were walking out to meet
death with grim confidence t*hat it awaited them
there in the dark forests a few miles distant.

If there seemed to be any fear of them forget-
ting it, — if girlish spirits ran too high in the bar-
racks,— Bachkarova quickly recalled it.

"You may all be dead in three days," she
would say. And soon afterward the Volga boat-
song or the rollicking peasant tune they were
singing would change to a deep, melancholy mass,
with all the tragedy of the moment and of mil-
lions of other moments packed into it.

In a cord around each girl's neck was a collec-
tion of sacred medals, and a tiny cloth pouch
whose contents I speculated upon.

"What will you do if you are made prisoner?"
I asked Skridlova one day.

"No one of us will ever be taken alive," she an-
swered, and pulled out the little gray pouch. "It
is the strongest and surest kind there is," she said.

Orlova seldom spoke. From morning till
103

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

night she went about the barracks, doing some-
thing for some one. I had no soldier coat to
wrap about me at night, and Orlova spread a
couple of tents over the hard boards. When the
black bread came from the commissary, Orlova
saw to it that we had our soldier ration — two
pounds and a half a day, more than any of us
could eat; and just at the moment when I was
most nearly petrified with cold, she was sure to
appear with a pail of hot tea. At noon and at
night, when two ragged little children from a
near-by village came to beg the "leavings," Or-
lova always managed to have an extra lump of
sugar for each of them.

She was born for service, for mothering, for
doing; but her solemn face, almost grim in its
crude strength, remained fixed on her vision of
death, and her thoughts were all for Holy Russia.

Nina was the comedy member of the Battalion.
She would have been an invaluable find for the
"movies." She was so big that she had to put
gussets in her soldier blouse to make it fit around
the hips. She had a wide mouth, an upturned
nose, and blue eyes, alternately full of fun and
tears. She kept the Battalion laughing all of

104

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

the time that it was not busy putting comforting
arms around her and drying her tears.

A bundle of strange incongruities was Nina —
utterly unfathomable to an American. Ever
since the war began she had been jeopardizing
her ample neck in the service of her country.
The bars of an Austrian prison held her in check
for six months, and she was considered such an
important catch that her captors demanded no
less a person than a famous Austrian general
when terms of exchange of prisoners were dis-
cussed.

She spoke a very little English, much French,
and a smattering of half a dozen other languages.
One day I looked up and found her kissing her
rifle ecstatically. She caught the bewilderment
in my eyes.

"I love my gun," she said almost defensively.

"But why?" I asked, trying to inquire into
that strange back-country of her mind and emo-
tions.

"Because it carries death. I love my bayonet,
too. I love all arms. I love all things that
carry death to the enemies of my country."

One night I sat on the edge of the bunk, brush-
105

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing my hair. She put her hand out and touched
it. Then she felt her own close-cropped head.

"Do you like short hair?" I asked her.

"For a woman, no. For a soldier, yes," she
answered.

It was a key-note. Nina spoke for the Battal-
ion. Soldiers and women were, for them, things
apart. When they cut off their long braids and
soft curls, and pledged themselves to fight and
die for their country, they put aside all the super-
ficial femininities.

Powder-puffs and cosmetics had remained at
home. Just once I saw a tiny mirror emerge
from a kit-bag long enough to permit its owner
to examine critically a small red spot on the end
of her nose.

But the essential womanliness in them cropped
out in a thousand ways.

Day and night the rain pounded upon the low
roof, and all that week our feet and boots were
soaked beyond all drying. It was bitterly cold
in the barracks, and the odors of cheese and
sausage purchased at the soldiers' store mingled
with the smell of wet clothes and greased
boots.

106

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

Marya Skridlova acquired a severe cough, and
her cheeks were flushed with fever.

"I am afraid I will never make a soldier," she
said one day, with a wry little smile; "I am too
demoiselle."

I recalled the first time I saw her. It was in
the barracks at Petrograd, the day she joined the
regiment. She still wore her Red Cross nurse's
uniform, and the lovely oval of her face was
framed with braids of soft brown hair. She was
twenty-five years old, spoke five languages, was
pretty, accomplished, and popular. Apparently
she had everything to live for, but she was quite
certain that her hours on earth were numbered,
and briefly. Every girl in the barracks was
devoted to her, and they were continually coax-
ing her to eat just another spoonful of the soup
and kasha, which she loathed.

"Why did you come?" I asked her.

"Because I felt I had to," she answered.
"What else is there for us to do? The soul of
the army is sick, and we must heal it. I have
come, and I shall stay until they give me a cross
— a metal one or a wooden one," she added.

Every night Bachkarova announced that to-
107

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

morrow they would leave for the trenches, and
every night the announcement brought a cheer.
In the morning they packed their kit-bags and
rolled up their blanket-coats; at night they were
still in the same place.

Always there was something lacking. First
it was the boots. The army shoemaker was not
used to providing for such small feet, and the
commissariat was sorely taxed. When the boots
arrived, the medical supplies were missing.
When the big metal soup kitchen on wheels had
come, there were no horses to pull it. A week
went by, but gradually the entire camp equip-
ment was collected.

Late one Sunday afternoon Bachkarova and
Skridlova were summoned to staff headquarters.
When they returned, they brought the news for
which every girl in the barracks was longing.
The Battalion was ordered to march at three
o'clock next morning.

Neither the hardness of the plank beds nor
the cold kept any one awake that night. There
was far too much excitement to think of sleep.
Gas-masks and wet laundry, water-bottles and

108

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

boots, trench shovels and kit-bags, came down
from the rafters in one mad scramble.

Before the dawn had come everything was in
place, and they trudged away through the rain
and mud of Malodetchana, singing a Cossack
marching song to lighten their packs and their
spirits.

All the world knows how they went into bat-
tle shouting a challenge to the deserting Rus-
sian troops. All the world knows that six of
them stayed behind in the forest, with wooden
crosses to mark their soldier graves. Ten were
decorated for bravery in action with the Order
of St. George, and twenty others received med-
als. Twenty-one were seriously wounded, and
many more than that received contusions. Only
fifty remained to take their places with the men
in the trenches when the battle was over.

The battle lasted for two days. Among the
pines and the birches of the dusky forests they
fought. With forty loyal men soldiers, they be-
came separated from the main body of the troops,
and took four rows of trenches before they were
obliged to retreat for lack of reinforcements.

109

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

I heard the story from the lips of twenty of
the wounded women. No one of them can tell
exactly what happened.

"We were carried away in the madness of the
moment," one of them said. "It was all so
strange and exciting, we had no time to think
about being afraid."

"No," said Marya Skridlova; "I was not
afraid. None of us were afraid. We expected
to die, so we had nothing to fear."

Then the demoiselle came to the surface again.
"It was hard, though. I have a cousin — he is
Russian in his heart, but his father is a German
citizen. He was drafted : he had to go. When
I saw the Germans, I thought of him. Sup-
pose I should kill him? Yes, it is hard for a
woman to fight."

Marya Skridlova got her Cross of St. George,
and she came back to Petrograd walking with a
limp as a result of shell shock.

"There were wounded Germans in a hut," she
said. "We were ordered to take them prison-
ers. They refused to be taken. We had to
throw hand-grenades in and destroy them. No;
war is not easy for a woman."

110

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

I asked about Leana.

"She was one of the six to stay behind," Marya
Skridlova answered. "She was wounded in six-
teen places, and died in the hospital after hours
of frightful suffering."

On a stool beside a hospital cot in which one
of the wounded girls lay was a German helmet.

She pointed to it with pride.

"He was wounded," she said. "He was sort
of half kneeling, and I hit him over the head with
the butt of my rifle and took the helmet away."

For a moment I could not speak. Then,
reaching for a straw to save my tottering world,
I said: "He was still shooting, of course?"

"No, no. He was wounded."

She had blue eyes, soft, kind blue eyes, and
lips that curled up at the corners. She was
twenty-five years old, and had been a village
dressmaker before she became a soldier.

"But Russian women are different," they say
• — they who have all their cubby-holes still in or-
der.

But they are not. I have talked with them,
slept with them, played with them, danced with
them, wept with them. They are like women —

111

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

like humans — everywhere. A little more melan-
choly, perhaps, but in all their potentialities es-
sentially the same. Destiny has done her work
well.

There were nearly five thousand women sol-
diers in Russia at the beginning of the fall of
1917. All over the country — in Moscow, in
Kieff, in Odessa — they were learning to load,
aim, and fire.

Bachkarova's little band in its first mad charge
was but the advance-guard. The making of
women soldiers became a business. People no
longer followed the uniformed woman about the
streets of Petrograd. They became a matter of
course.

In Moscow I saw a thousand of them, repre-
senting all spheres of life from the peasant to the
princess. In the officers' school, twenty girls
were being trained to take their command.
They were sleeping on boards, and getting used
to soup and kasha, and all believed their day in
the trenches was close at hand.

Soon after the fall of Riga, Bachkarova left
the hospital in Petrograd, where she had been
slowly recovering, and went to Moscow to lead

112

Lining up for soup and kasha

Women soldiers at rest between drills

The crowd hugs the Nevsky to get out of range of the machine-guns in the July

riots

The Cossacks bury their dead

THE BATTALION OF DEATH

a fresh battalion of girls to the defense of the
new front.

Out on the Finland road, not far from Petro-
grad, eleven hundred of them, after a stiff course
in training in barracks, had a month of camp life
to harden them for service in the trenches.
These girls were to see their only fighting in
the defense of the Winter Palace in the Bolshevik
Revolution, and none was killed.

When the Cossack troops of General Korniloff
prepared to march on Petrograd, the Provisional
Government took stock of the forces at its com-
mand.

Prince Kudasheff, who had been drilling the
women soldiers, reported there was not a better
disciplined or more thoroughly prepared unit
in the Russian army.

Bachkarova's adventurous battalion took no
thought of age or physical condition; but these
later soldiers submitted to a rigid examination,
conformed to all of the requirements of the men
of the army, and were asked to adhere to a rigid
moral code.

They had their own transport and medical
service, signal corps, machine-gun company,

113

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

mitrailleuses, and a scouting detachment of
twenty Cossack women. Such was the woman
soldier as Destiny delivered her into a startled
world. ^

Her movement was a failure, not because of
any shortcomings on the part of the women, but
because it was based upon a false premise. It
assumed that the Russian soldier left the trenches
because he was a coward. He was not: he was
merely a disillusioned man who had lost all his
old gods, and had not yet found new ones worthy
of his faith.

Women can fight. Women have the courage,
the endurance, even the strength, for fighting.
Vera has demonstrated that, and if necessary all
the other women of the world can demonstrate
it. The issue is no longer a question of whether
Vera can fight, but whether Vera should fight.
She will fight whenever and wherever she feels
she must. She is a potential soldier, and will
continue to be until the muddled old world is re-
made upon a basis of human freedom and safety.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

TURNING into the Nevsky Prospect was like
opening a telegram. I could never be quite cer-
tain what I would find there, but the first glance
always told the whole story.

Nevsky was the revolutionary thermometer.
When the City of Peter pursued the calm and
normal way, the wood-paved avenue indicated the
fact. When the hectic passions of revolt ran
high, the temper of the populace was as plainly
registered.

It was on the Nevsky Prospect, in the early
days of March, that the first courageous crowd
of men and women dared Cossack whips and sa-
bers and cast amazed glances at the soldiers who
gave them smiles and words of encouragement
when they had expected the stinging lash and the
deadly blade. It was here that the multitudes
gathered for rejoicing when the victory was won,
and here also they came, tragic and proud, bear-

115

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing their martyred dead upon their shoulders.
Each succeeding moment of joy or grief or pro-
test was recorded here, and I quickly learned to
read the signs.

At ten o'clock on a Tuesday morning in July,
I stepped out of the Nicolaievski Station into the
circle, to find the mercury rising and the Nevsky
of the hour strangely different from that with
which I had parted. The talking crowds in the
Znamensky Square were gone. Alexander III
sat alone on the bronze horse, undisputed mon-
arch once more of all he surveyed. There
was n't a street-car in sight. The only visible
izvostchik wanted double his former price to carry
me to the War Hotel.

It was the hour when shutters should be com-
ing down from shops. Instead they were fas-
tened tight, and in front of the Gostinny Dvor
men were out with hammers, nailing boards
across the plate-glass windows. Had something
already happened, or was something about to
happen? I could not be sure. The izvostchik
kept up a rapid-fire conversation, pointing an
excited finger occasionally toward a freshly made
bullet-hole in the glass fronts.

116

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

At the moment I was interested in nothing in
the world so much as my clean little blue-and-
white room and a hot bath. My trench khaki
was caked with mud and reeked of the odors of
barracks and stuffy trains. On the way back
from the front, I had spent two sleepless nights
sandwiched with fourteen other people into a
compartment intended to accommodate four.
The first night I shared the upper berth with
another woman. It was so narrow that we had
to lie head to foot. There were no pillows or
bedding, and I am sure that neither of us closed
our eyes. The next night I insisted on her sleep-
ing alone, and I sat below, listening to the crowd
talk. Toward morning a pathetic-looking little
peasant woman, nodding uncomfortably back
and forth, bumped against me. I glanced at
her hair. It was hopelessly in need of a sham-
poo. I decided that, after all, dirt did n't really
matter, and settled her head on my shoulder.
She went peacefully to sleep.

This morning all that was past. With soap
and water so close at hand, dirt mattered more
even than probable revolution. At the hotel I
hastened upstairs without stopping to ask ques-

117

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tions. An hour later I emerged, remade and
ready for anything.

I hurried toward the Nevsky. Again the
scene was changed, and there was no mistaking
the signs. The Bolsheviki were taking posses-
sion of the city. The uprising that Petrograd
had been expecting hourly for weeks had come.
The Bolsheviki, radical minority in the Soviet of
Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies, were making
a demonstration against coalition with the bour-
geoisie. Led by Nicolai Lenine and Leon
Trotzky, the Red Guard, composed of armed
workers from the factory districts and of sailors
from the naval station at Kronstadt, had come
out to demand "all power to the Soviet," and
with banners of flaming red were crying:
"Down with the capitalist ministers 1" "Land to
the peasants!" "Control of industry by the
workers!" and "Immediate general peace!"

The night before, thousands upon thousands
of armed workers had marched through the
streets singing the "Marseillaise." This morn-
ing they were continuing the demonstration in
more menacing terms.

The deserted Nevsky was suddenly filled with
118

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

people. Down the street came a huge motor-
truck, a vicious-looking machine-gun mounted
behind and another on each side. It was filled
with Red Guardsmen and sailors. Each man
was armed with a rifle, and its threatening nose
was pointed in the direction of the crowd.

I stood there watching, wide-eyed and won-
dering, recalling that whispered prophecy that
had been sounding perpetually through the
spring days : "The streets of Petrograd will run
rivers of blood."

Could it be that these words were about to
come true there before my eyes? I could not
believe it. Unreality was in the air. The truck
looked as if it had been wheeled on to the stage
from the property-room. The guns might have
been of papier-mache. The occupants them-
selves seemed like boys playing a new
game, rather than like men going out to kill
and to die.

An automobile driven by a civilian whirled
from a side street. Three sailors and a couple
of armed factory workers ordered the chauffeur
to halt. They backed their command by point-
ing their guns at his head, and he promptly

119

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

obeyed. One of them took the front seat. Two
stretched themselves flat on the mud-guards and
pointed their rifles in front of them. The others
climbed into the tonneau. The car whizzed
away out of sight.

The crowds on the sidewalk kept one eye on
the guns, and one eye on a convenient exit in
case of trouble. I walked in the direction of the
Hotel Europe. I had gone a distance of three
or four blocks when the sound of a shot brought
all to a sudden stop. The crowd turned as a
single man and fled in the opposite direction.
The crowd was quicker and more earnest in flight
than I. Before I had time to realize what had
happened, I had been knocked to my knees. I
found myself jammed against the iron grating
of a basement door, with what seemed like half
of Petrograd pushing me through the bars.

A moment later some one in the rear shouted,
"Kharasho!" (All right), and the crowd climbed
off my back. I picked myself up unhurt. A
soldier standing near had been shoved through a
plate-glass window, and his face and hands were
covered with ugly cuts splashing blood liberally
on the sidewalk.

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IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

I waited while a formidable armored car
passed, then crossed the street and turned the
corner leading to the hotel. Just as I reached the
entrance, I heard the rush of running footsteps
behind me, and turned to see a crowd of men,
women, and children tumbling out of the Nevsky
as fast as willing legs could carry them.

Off in the direction of the Gostinny Dvor the
staccato rat-a-tat-tat of machine-guns sounded
like the beat of a snare-drum, interrupted at in-
tervals by the sharp, quick crack of rifles.

However much those men with guns had
seemed like small boys playing at being danger-
ous, there was no doubt that the sounds were om-
inous enough.

All that day Petrograd lay terrified and trem-
bling in the hollow of the Bolsheviki hand. Most
of the time the armored cars rode peacefully up
and down the Nevsky. Now and then some-
thing, nobody knows what, would start things.
The guns rattled and the crowds ran.

"Somebody shot from the window," one of the
Bolsheviki would venture furiously.

"Provokator! Provokator!" some one in the
crowd would cry.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Occasionally the moan of a wounded man rose
above the clatter of hurrying feet, but the guns
were mercifully inaccurate and the death toll un-
believably small.

What the night might have brought forth if the
weather had been fine, no one can know. Early
in the evening it began to rain, and rain has a
more dampening effect on the ardor of Russians
than any amount of armed force. The popu-
lace stayed indoors. There was no one on the
Nevsky to see the armored cars rush up and
down, so they stopped rushing.

The sailors sailed back to Kronstadt again in
the boats that had brought them, and the Red
Guard retired to the opposite side of the Neva.
Before they left they encountered a group of
Cossacks on the Liteiny, and turned the machine-
guns on them. The Cossacks wheeled their
horses about and fled, but not before half a dozen
of them had gone down before the guns. The
horses were still there next morning when I ven-
tured out into the rain. Around them stood a
curious circle of men and women and little boys
in red peasant blouses, who looked as though
they expected the beautiful ponies to rise up

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

again and tell them what all this trouble was
about.

The government crisis was acute. Most of the
ministers had resigned. The majority of the
Council of Workmen and Soldiers had refused
to take all the power. Taking power was a
thankless task. The Council was already the
government behind the government, and to
become the government would be to become the
scapegoat for all the various brands of a discon-
tent growing daily more rampant in Russia, and
for all those that were to follow as food became
scarcer and living more difficult.

Also, the majority of the Deputies, in spite of
the general demand for peace, had voted against
an immediate and independent termination of the
war. The split between the majority made up
of Mensheviki and Social Revolutionists and the
Bolshevist minority was of ancient origin. It
had its inception in the Socialist Conference in
Switzerland in 1903, when the Bolsheviki re-
jected the Menshevist proposal to work with the
Russian liberals for the spread of democracy in
Russia, and advocated armed revolution. Nico-
lai Lenin, the leader then, as he is now. called the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Mensheviki "opportunists," and declared that
the masses of the Russian people could never free
themselves from economic as well as political
slavery, except by means of a class war.

When Kerensky determined to bring troops
from the front to defend the government, the
executive council of the Soviet sanctioned the de-
cision. By noon on Wednesday, the govern-
ment, or so much of it as was still in office, began
to get things into its own hands. On the Nevsky,
that day, a few of the food shops were open, but
most of the shutters remained down and the doors
barred. There were no street-cars running, and
all the bridges except one were swung open.
That part of the city that lay beyond the
Neva, and is known as the Petrograd side, was
practically isolated. Only the palace bridge re-
mained closed, and guards from the troops loyal
to Kerensky were stationed at the entrance and
examined all who crossed over.

The rain came down in torrents, and the streets
were a desert. In the afternoon I walked to the
Dvortsovy Square, where the War Department
and the General Staff were housed in a great
crescent-shaped building fronting the Winter

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

Palace. The square had suddenly become an
armed camp. Armored cars and Red Cross am-
bulances, motor-trucks for transporting soldiers,
and all the paraphernalia that the Bolsheviki had
similarly flaunted on the Nevsky the day before,
was drawn up in front of the Staff office, await-
ing signs of further disturbance.

All day Thursday and Friday the troops came
in from the front. Thursday morning a bicycle
regiment arrived, cycled through the city and
across the Field of Mars. That evening from
the War Hotel I watched an endless procession
of Cossacks file through St. Isaac's Square.
They came riding on gray horses, the descending
sun flashing on the tips of their lances. Blankets
and tents, kit-bags and balalakis were strapped
to their saddles. The regimental band headed
the procession, and the regimental priest and four
bullocks brought up the rear. Sandwiched in
between the soldiers and the priest were the soup
kitchens on wheels, and the wagons filled with hay
for the horses. They came clattering across the
cobbles, making such a din that it hushed the
cheers of the bystanders to a whisper.

At midnight I heard a band outside the window
125

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

playing the "Marseillaise." I hurried into the
square, to find another procession of soldiers ar-
riving from the front. When the band passed
out of hearing, the soldiers tramped to a march-
ing tune of their own making.

Thursday morning the Bolsheviki were still in
control of the Fortress of Peter and Paul, and
were directing their operations from the palace
of a famous ballet-dancer who had been a favor-
ite of the Tsar.

Friday morning the Neva was swarming with
people. Most of the shops opened, and the
street-cars were running on their usual uncertain
schedule. The trouble seemed to be over, yet
Petrograd's nerves were not quite relaxed.

At twelve that night I was lying in bed read-
ing, when suddenly again came the unmistakable
sputterings of the machine-guns and the crack
of rifles. I slipped into a dressing-gown and out
into the hall. It was rapidly filling with officers
and their wives, all in a similar state of undress.
The lights were quickly extinguished. Nobody
could tell where the firing was, but it seemed to
be directly below us.

I leaned out of the window on the sixth floor
126

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

and looked at the square. Nothing was visible
in the strange gray light of that darkest hour of
the white night. There were no shouts, no cries,
no single sound but the rattle of the machine-gun
and the bark of the rifles.

The women stood about in frightened groups,
talking in hushed tones. "It 's civil war," some-
body said. "The streets will run blood before
this thing is over."

An officer arriving at that moment reassured
them.

"You have nothing to fear here," he said.
"They are fighting on the palace bridge across
the Neva. Some troops just landed from the
front have been attacked by the Bolsheviki."

At one o'clock we crept back to our beds. The
firing had stopped as suddenly as it had com-
menced. At two the silence was broken by a
few stray rifle shots on the Morskaya in front
of the telephone exchange two blocks away.
After that there was quiet for the night.

By Sunday fear had lifted from the heavy heart
of Petrograd. Her people were being happy
while they could. St. Isaac's Square was flooded
with sunshine. The church bells, deep resound-

137

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing bases and tinkling sopranos, called the faith-
ful to worship.

The nerves of Petrograd were completely re-
laxed. This sunny, smiling summer afternoon
had been bought and paid for. But for the evi-
dence of mangled bodies in the hospital morgues,
we might have dreamed the week just past. But
for the boarded windows in the Nevsky, and the
sentries still guarding the telephone exchange
and encamped before the Winter Palace, the
sound of the machine-guns and the sight of the
frightened crowd fleeing in terror might have been
only a nightmare. There were no rivers of blood ;
the gutters did not run red. There was only a
handful of victims where we had feared there
might be hundreds.

The Bolsheviki proclaimed the uprising a suc-
cess. They said they had no desire for blood-
shed, and wished only to make a demonstration
of power. They had done that, and were satis-
fied. The riots were significant chiefly because
they introduced the Bolsheviki to a world that
was soon to know much more of them, and be-
cause they foreshadowed events to come.

The Cossacks were hailed as deliverers. The
128

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

conservative and reactionary papers wrote pseans
of praise of them. The moderate Socialist press
was silent. Though they had been in favor of
the suppression of the Bolshevik uprising, their
traditional hatred of the system of force for which
the Cossacks stood made it impossible for them
to rejoice. Some of the Cossacks refused to ac-
cept the role of hero, and passed a resolution de-
claring that they did not wish to be praised by
the bourgeoisie. They made it clear that they
were revolutionists who were with the working-
people and that they could not be counted upon
to defend bourgeois law and order against the
masses. It was the beginning of the breach in
the Cossack ranks — a breach that was to be a
vital factor in revolutionary movements of the
future.

Late one afternoon the soldiers carried their
dead in silver coffins into the great cool recesses
of St. Isaac's Cathedral, and laid them in state
before the "holy gate," with the towering columns
of lapis lazuli and malachite to keep watch
through the night.

The next morning the soldiers gathered in the
square, black mourning flags fluttering from the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tops of their lances. There were thousands and
thousands of them — a military spectacle such as
Petrograd had not seen since the days of the
Tsars. The cavalry lined up on both sides of
the square, their horses standing at perfect at-
tention. The infantry stacked their rifles and
squatted on the cobblestones during the long
mass. The priests, in mourning robes of black
and silver, carried ecclesiastical banners ; and the
caskets were borne on ornate canopied hearses
drawn by black horses.

There were Red Cross nurses carrying huge
wreaths of artificial flowers. Foreign diplomats
and members of the Allied military missions came
to pay their respects. And, just as the last cof-
fin was carried from the church, a limousine drove
up. Alexander Kerensky stepped out and fell
into line, and a mighty cheer broke from the
crowd.

The funeral procession lasted most of the day.
Scouts rode along the line of march, ordering all
windows to be closed against the stray shots of
provokators. There were no carriages, no au-
tomobiles. In Russia they follow their dead to
their graves on foot, and the tragic strains of the

130

IN THE HOLLOW OF THEIR HAND

Russian funeral music sob their way into your
very soul.

The casual observer in Petrograd would have
said that revolutionary disturbances were a thing
of the past; that order had come to stay. But
the casual observer would have failed to under-
stand the breadth and depth of the movements
stirring beneath the surface.

As I stood watching the funeral procession file
past, an acquaintance, opposed to the new Rus-
sian order, joined me for a minute. "This is the
end of Socialism," he said triumphantly.

On the contrary, it was only the beginning of
the class struggle in the Revolution.

131

CHAPTER VII

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

LEON TROTZKY, Bolshevist leader, was secure
in jail. Nicolai Lenin was in hiding. Those
who believed he was in the employ of the German
government declared he had escaped to Berlin.
Those who still held to the belief that you can kill
a movement by putting its leaders behind bars,
or driving them underground, proudly boasted
that the Bolsheviki were crushed.

One night several of us were having dinner in
a little Italian restaurant. The argument of the
evening — there was always an argument in Rus-
sia— was about the origin of the Bolshevist move-
ment. One man declared that the thing was a
German plot. There was a new member of the
American colony at dinner that night. Williams
was his name — Albert Rhys Williams. He was
decidedly an American type, tall, with a pleas-
ant, frank face and a delightfully inclusive smile.
He had been in Belgium at the time of the Ger-

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

man advance, and had written a book on his ex-
periences in the claws of the German eagle. He
had come to Russia some time before, but had
been away from Petrograd, meeting the peasants
and workers. He took no part in the discussions
for some time. Finally he said:

"I wonder how many Bolsheviki you know?"

We looked from one to another, and had to
admit that our acquaintance in that quarter was
rather limited.

"You know, it makes such a difference when
we know people," he said. "There is Peters,
now;" and he told the story of Peters, and of
half a dozen others whom he had met.

"I think it would be ridiculous to suppose
there is no German money in the Bolshevist move-
ment," he said, "because there is German money
everywhere. But the movement itself is far more
fundamental. Remember, Trotzky and Lenin
are preaching to-day the doctrine they were
preaching fifteen years ago. It seems to me
short-sighted and dangerous to dismiss the Bol-
sheviki without more knowledge of him and his
ideas."

Mr. Williams's story of Peters had interested

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

me especially. I said I would like to meet him,
and Mr. Williams promised to bring him to din-
ner the next night. They came. It was the
first of many times, and they opened many win-
dows on the Revolution to me that would other-
wise have been closed.

Jacob Peters was thirty-two years old, and
looked even younger. He was a Lett — an in-
tense, quick, nervous little chap with a shock of
curly black hair brushed back from his forehead,
an upturned nose that gave to his face the sug-
gestion of a question-mark, and a pair of blue
eyes full of human tenderness. He spoke Eng-
lish with a London accent, and referred to his
English wife as the "missis," and to his little girl
in the language of all adoring fathers.

"Why are you a Bolshevik?" I asked him.

"Well," said he seriously, "I Ve lived in Lon-
don, and I Ve seen them on the West Side living
in luxury, in silks and satins, with gold plate and
extravagant food; I Ve seen them on the East
Side, sleeping out under the bridges at night. I
don't know much about your America, but I
know that you too have an East Side and a West
Side. We in Russia have fought too long and

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

sacrificed too much to be content with that. We
must find a better way, or our freedom will not
be worth while."

"What is your way?" I asked him.

"The Bolshevik believes in the shortest cut to
socialism," he answered. "We believe that the
people who till the land and the workers who
run the industries should control them; and that
the masses of the people should rise up and put
a stop to capitalistic and imperialistic exploita-
tion, which is responsible for war."

Not then, but on other occasions, I learned
something of Peters' life. His story is the story
of most revolutionists of the Baltic provinces,
where, in spite of German control, — or perhaps
because of German oppression, — the revolution-
ists were more radical and more intense than in
any other part of Russia. The richer landown-
ers are known as "black barons," the lesser land-
owners as "gray barons." Peters was the son of
a "gray baron." He began to question life as a
very small boy.

"I worked in the fields," he told me, "and when
the thunderstorm came up I prayed God to save
me. Then, when the thunderstorm was over,

135

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

I began asking is there a God. When the thun-
derstorm came again, I prayed. One day I was
sent to see my grandmother. On the way I met
a stranger. We walked together, and it "was a
long journey. I asked him about all the things
that were troubling me. He gave me two
pamphlets. One was called 'The Tenth Man.'
I had wondered why father, who was not nearly
so clever as the workers, should have a whole
vote for himself, while the workers had only one
vote for ten men. I read the pamphlets, and at
school I told my comrades about them. We pub-
lished a paper about it; but the teacher confis-
cated it and sent for my parents. My father
beat me, and I hated him. From that moment
I became a revolutionist."

At the age of fifteen Peters left home and went
to work in a shop. He joined a revolutionary or-
ganization, and was four times thrown into
prison. He and his comrades were stood up
against a wall while they counted out every tenth
man and killed him. He saw his best friend shot
down in this fashion, and dozens of other com-
rades. Every act of oppression and repression
only made him a more determined revolutionist.

136

A typical street scene in the Volga river towns

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

He escaped from prison, and lived in France,
Switzerland, and England, helping as best he
could his companions still in Russia. At the time
of the Revolution in March he was holding an ex-
cellent position as manager of the import depart-
ment of a large English mercantile company.
He wore a frock-coat on Sundays, and walked
out with his English "missis" and his little girl
in the height of order and respectability.

But the call of free Russia, the call of the Revo-
lution, was too strong for him. He came back
to rejoice and fight. He became the leader of
the Lettish Socialists, and worked day and night
for the cause in which he believed. He made
flying trips to Petrograd, and usually managed
to drop in for a few minutes while he was there.
One night he drew a slip of paper from his pocket
and asked me if I recognized the signature. I
gasped.

"Why, it 's Lenin," I said. "Then he 's here ?"

Peters nodded.

"I 've seen him to-day," he said. "This is the
candidate's ticket for the Constituent Assembly.
They have given him to me, because our district
is the most radical and w^can elect him there."

137

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"And you are absolutely sure that Lenin is an
honest revolutionist and not a pro-German?" I
asked.

He raised his head with a toss of defiance and
his blue eyes flashed fire.

"If I wasn't sure I wouldn't have this," he
said.

We had bitter arguments, but he did not re-
sent my disagreement. He knew that I was try-
ing honestly and sympathetically to understand
all of the forces at work in the Revolution, and he
respected that effort. Through him I met many
other Bolsheviki, and they talked frankly of their
dreams and their schemes.

One day a man showed me a letter from
Trotzky, written in prison. It was a call to his
followers — not for himself, but for his ideas.
They told me that he was in constant touch with
the men of his party, and was doing quite as ef-
fective work in prison as he could have done out.

Jacob Peters told me much of the methods by
which prisoners communicated with each other
and the outside world. Occasionally a news-
paper was smuggled in, and the man who received
it read it hidden half u/ider a blanket, with one

138

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

eye on the spy-hole in the door, watching, for the
guard, and then tapped its contents on the wall
to the prisoner in the next cell. By a system of
dots placed according to a prearranged code un-
der the letters in a book, the men inside the prison
were kept informed of what their comrades out-
side were doing.

The most elaborate scheme Peters concocted
was carried out with the aid of a girl revolution-
ist. He was trying to escape, but he was deep
in the black books of the prison officials and was
allowed no reading matter. He took a piece of
black bread, chewed it until it was in a sticky
paste, and spread it on his arm to dry. Once
dry it was as tough as a piece of parchment. He
put his message on one side and rolled the parch-
ment into a small ball. Just as the girl was leav-
ing, he asked permission of the guard to kiss her
good-by through the bars. The guard, seeing no
harm in an innocent kiss, consented. The girl
was immediately on the alert for a message.
Peters slipped the ball into his mouth, and in the
kiss transferred it to hers. She carried out his
directions, and he succeeded in escaping.

As July wore into August, there was little go-
139

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ing on in Petrograd, and I decided to take a
journey to see if I could find out how the new
doctrines were being received in some of the
older and more remote parts of Russia. Various
stories of the dangers of travel came to us.

Russian acquaintances and old residents in the
foreign colony discouraged attempting travel;
but an American friend, Helen Smith, a kindred
spirit in eagerness for the trail, agreed to go with
me. Miss Smith, who is an expert on the subject
of peasant art, had traveled to Russia four times
since the war. She spoke the language, and had
a genuine understanding and a very real appre-
ciation of the people. The pictured dangers
had very little reality for either of us. We de-
termined to go to Moscow, and from there to
Nizhni Novgorod by rail, then up the Volga in a
river steamer.

There has always been a strange lure for me
in names. "Mother Volga," as the Russians call
the largest and most romantic river in Europe,
was one of the places in which I believed as one
believes in fairies one never expects to see. The
Russians speak its name with a caress. No other

140

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

river in the world, unless it be the Nile, has been
surrounded by so much story.

The Volga is the great highway of Russia
from Petrograd to the Caspian Sea. To Nizhni
Novgorod, where the Volga and Oka rivers meet,
the commerce of the world comes flowing. Here
they hold the most famous of Russia's sixteen
hundred annual fairs.

The fair lasts for forty days; and for ninety-
nine summers rug merchants from Persia, trap-
pers from Siberia, silk dealers from China, wool
kings from Manchuria, Turks and Arabs, Gyp-
sies and Caucasians, Eastern and Continental
tradesmen of all kinds, have come as regularly as
the hot breezes that blow off the lazy, sleepy Old
Volga. The exotic color, the weird customs, the
strange play of the children of this patch-quilt
earth all gathered under the same piece of sky,
have made it a prolonged fete day and night from
beginning to end.

Here, on the hundredth anniversary, we found
the fair pathetically trying to pretend itself open.
We drove through streets, miles and miles of
streets, whose sides were packed solidly with

141

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

bazaars. They were yellow-painted and green-
roofed, as always, but padlocked doors told the
story. The 200,000,000-ruble fair on the banks
of the ancient river was virtually closed. In one
of the main buildings a band tried hopelessly to
rouse the spirits of the crowd ; but the result was
more gruesome than laughter at a funeral.
There was little for sale : a sordid mass of tawdry
trinkets made in Germany and Japan, a few
sugarless sweetmeats — that was all.

Our boat sailed at eight o'clock at night, pick-
ing its way between the twinkling red and green
lights gathered at the meeting of the rivers. Be-
fore we went, we took an elevator to the top of
the bluff to dine in an out-of-doors cafe. Food
seemed quite as scarce here as in Petrograd, and
even more expensive. We ordered some beef
cutlets (the Russian equivalent of hamburg
steak) . We waited and we waited; they did not
come. We enlisted the efforts of the head waiter,
who poured an avalanche of words upon his as-
sistants. Still they did not come. The hour of
sailing drew nearer and nearer. We watched
the clock, and, when there was not another sec-
ond to spare, prepared to leave. The cutlets ar-

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

rived. We wrapped them in paper napkins and
took them with us.

It was well we did; for war and revolution,
whatever else it had done, had certainly robbed
the Volga chefs of all their far-famed talents.
I tried from six o'clock to eleven one night to
persuade the cabin-boy to get me something to
eat.

I wondered, as I looked at the fertile fields
along the Volga, how much they knew of the part
they would play in the coming course of revolu-
tion. Even the gods seemed cruel to the cities of
the north; for on the Volga, where transportation
facilities were adequate, the spring rains had been
so light that the crops were far below normal;
and down in the south, where weather conditions
had proved ideal, the railways were too disorgan-
ized to move the grain.

The boat stopped at every little town along the
way, and the landings were a series of Rapine
pictures. Now it was a gang of stevedores in
full cotton trousers with inch-wide stripes of gay
color, and crude straw sandals upon their un-
stockinged feet. They dragged their heavy car-
goes down to the boat's edge with ropes held over

143

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

their shoulders, singing a weird rhythmical tune
of the Volga to time their movements. Again,
it was a group of gypsies on the dock's edge,
camped for the night — the naked brown babies
swarming under the feet of the Volga giants, who
dodged them uncomplainingly.

Everywhere we found the people talking revo-
lution, and the phrases that sounded through the
streets of Petrograd were familiar here. We
bought the newspapers. Several of them were
trying desperately to rouse the people to the great
Germanic danger. Miss Smith read them to
me. Many of the appeals were from the Zemstvo
Unions. One from the Kineshna Revolutionary
Committee said:

"We are facing a great disaster for free Rus-
sia. Absolute ruin threatens us, and the tri-
umph of the armed fist of William, if we are not
bold enough to oppose to him a steel-like strength
of the revolutionary army. Famine and its re-
sults threaten us, and the counter-revolution is
making use of this. We must at once be bold
enough to rectify our food question, to exert
great efforts over this and other dangers. An-

144

OLD RIVERS AND NEW DOCTRINES

archy and counter-revolution threaten to restore
the old regime under William.

"A despicable peace, giving us into the claws
of our enemy, threatens us unless we take imme-
diate steps. All who can must be ready to go to
the front to take the place of the worn and ex-
hausted warriors — ready to hurl back the enemy
or die in the attempt. It is a question of saving
the land and the Revolution. The army is in
need of ammunition, food, clothing, and uninter-
rupted transfer. The workmen must place the
interests of the land and the Revolution above all
else and raise their standard of work to the maxi-
mum. The peasants must give all the bread they
can spare. All to work, to work! The danger
is great!"

There was no doubt that the new doctrines had
found their way to the banks of the old rivers.
Petrograd was not the only place where revolu-
tion interfered with work, and proclamations and
counter-proclamations kept the populace in a
turmoil of doubt and desire.

145

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

SEPTEMBER came. The padlocked doors of
Nizhni Novgorod and the quiet waters of the
Volga seemed far, far away. Farther still were
the hectic days of early June when the recalci-
trant machine-guns sputtered up and down the
Nevsky. The white nights were gone. The sol-
dier lovers and their sweethearts strolled beside
the Neva now only at the invitation of the infre-
quent moon.

The War Hotel had undergone a transforma-
tion. After living for a whole summer each unto
himself alone, breakfasting, lunching, teaing, and
dining in our own rooms, we suddenly came out
of hiding and looked one another over.

The bloodstains of the Revolution had been
scoured from the rose-colored carpet in the draw-
ing-room. The boards had come down from the
broken windows, and new glass and gorgeous

146

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

crushed mulberry curtains had taken their place.
The dining-room, a few weeks ago the repository
of armless chairs and legless tables, dumb victims
of the vengeance of an angry mob, now fronted
the world arrayed in white napery.

It was a setting for luxury, but there was none.
When Feodor served luncheon, the first course
was often chopped meat and kasha stuffed into
cabbage leaves, and the second the same chopped
meat and kasha inadequately hidden by the half
of a cucumber. There was no third. We had
the best the market offered, and the cook was
sorely tested to disguise its limitations.

A new spirit was abroad in the streets. The
ghost of Peter walked with firmer tread. Many
of the predicted calamities of the foregoing weeks
had failed to materialize. Finland had not re-
volted. Ukraine was still a part of Russia.
The railroad strike continued only a threat.
The breach between Kerensky and Korniloff,
scheduled for the Moscow conference, had been
averted.

The reactionaries still clamored for the strong
hand of a dictator. The Bolsheviki still cried,
"Down with the bourgeosie." Kerensky strove

147

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

desperately to follow a middle course satisfactory
to both. He knew his people well enough to re-
alize that the first attempt to use force, even if
he had it to use, would result in a reaction that
would ultimately mean the downfall of his gov-
ernment.

In the hours I had spent at the Soviet, in the
Peasants' Convention, and talking with soldiers
and workmen everywhere, I had become con-
vinced there was no power in Russia that Keren-
sky or any other man could use; that the masses
would regard any attempt to instal a dictator as
an attack on their Revolution and would desert
the man responsible for it.

I ventured this opinion one night at dinner.
Mrs. Pankhurst, the English suffragist, was
there, and four or five others. They laughed at
the idea; said Russia must have a strong hand;
called Kerensky a weakling, and declared that
only Korniloff could save the situation. He
would rule with an iron hand.

One group of foreigners in Petrograd saw
clearly the hopelessness of trying to impose a
man on horseback upon the Russian workers.
They were the members of the American Red

148

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

Cross Mission to Russia. They came quietly
into town one afternoon in August, with seventy
tons of surgical supplies in their kit-bags, a large
amount of common sense in their heads, and a
wealth of human sympathy in their hearts. I
was at the Nicolaievski Station when they ar-
rived, twenty-nine of them, all in uniform of the
American Red Cross. I looked at them and said
to myself: "I wonder what sort of a dent you
will make in Russia."

In one of the uniforms was the ample girth and
the smiling round face of Colonel William B.
Thompson, who was financing the mission. To
the left of him, towering like an iron-gray moun-
tain above the crowd, was Dr. Frank Billings of
Chicago. On the other side, Raymond Robins,
dark and determined, with a ready-for-anything
look about him. There was something big about
this trio, and they went to work on the Russian
job in the best American spirit — with their sleeves
rolled up.

They met the Russian aristocrat and the Rus-
sian bourgeois. Then they met the Russian peo-
ple. Breshkovskaya and Tchaikovski, grand-
mother and grandfather of the Russian Revolu-

149

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tion, opened for them a door through which they
looked down a long vista of hard years at the stu-
pendous struggle of a brave crowd.

They saw that the old altars had been broken
to bits, and the one vital, hopeful thing remaining
was the devotion of the masses to their Revolu-
tion. They had no faith in the altruistic inten-
tion of the German, and believed for Russia to
stop fighting would be suicidal. Kerensky and
Breshkovskaya held the same belief, but they
knew also that the war-weary multitudes were
possessed of a consuming longing for peace; that
German propaganda was working to discredit
the Allies and to convince the Russians that the
German people sympathized with their Revolu-
tion and shared their longing for democratic
peace. Almost daily they were supplementing
their propaganda by blowing up munition plants
and laying whole towns in ruins.

Raymond Robins, who brought to his study of
the situation valuable experience in the American
labor movement, said to me, in one of the first
conversations we had:

"The only binder that will hold New Russia
together is the Revolution. The only way to

150

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

help Russia is to help her make a success of thatf
Revolution."

The Provisional Government was in power.
At its head was Alexander Kerensky, the young
man. He and Katherine Breshkovskaya, the
old, old woman, in spite of the fact that the forced
offensive on the southwest front in July had weak-
ened both, were at this time still the mouth-pieces
of the majority. They were the only govern-
ment there was. The Mission invested its ener-
gies in trying to help the government in its diffi-
cult problems of administration. Unfortu-
nately, most of the other Allied representatives
failed to share their opinion, or the results might
have been different.

Suddenly Riga fell. The news of its actual
occupation surprised no one. It had long been
conceded in Petrograd that the Germans could
take it whenever they chose. From the military
standpoint, it had little significance. It was
chiefly useful to the German militarists as a scalp
to dangle before the war-weary section of their
own populace. The Russian advocates of a dic-
tator seized upon it as a weapon with which to
attack Kerensky. They blamed the leniency of

151

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the Kerensky policy and the breakdown of the
army for the fall of Riga. There were charges
and counter-charges. The soldiers vehemently
denounced their officers, accusing them of be-
traying the city to the Germans. One regiment
of Lettish troops had refused to retreat when or-
dered, and fought until they were wiped out al-
most to a man. Most of them were Bolsheviki,
and they asserted that their officers were selling
Riga to defeat their Revolution.

The Germans were reported marching on
Petrograd. Refugees fleeing from Riga poured
into the city. There was not a spare room any-
where. AJmost as many people were trying to
get out of the city as were trying to get in.
They stood in queues before the railway offices
all day and all night, trying to buy tickets that
would take them anywhere beyond the reach of
the Germans.

The anniversary of the sixth month of Russian
freedom was at hand. Petrograd, ready at all
times to expect the worst, believed there would
be some tragic celebration of the day. Part of
it trembled in its boots for fear of a Bolshevik
uprising; more of it predicted a German air raid;

152

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

some of it longingly scanned the horizon for a
Russian Napoleon. Nobody was prepared for
what happened, and everybody was still more
amazed by what did not happen. When the of-
ficial announcement was made, "the Korniloff ad-
venture has been liquidated," the populace was
still gasping.

Every man, woman, and child in Petrograd
believed the city was about to become the battle-
ground of the bloodiest conflict the world had
ever seen. What else was there to believe?
Were not the troops of General Korniloff,
counted the strongest man in the Russian army,
marching on Petrograd to capture the capital and
proclaim their leader military dictator? Was
not the advancing horde headed by the "savage"
division — wildest of the wild Cossacks? Were
not the government soldiers, charged with pro-
tecting the country against counter-revolution at
any cost, marching out to meet them in bloody
combat? Korniloff had announced his dictator-
ship, and offered Kerensky the portfolio of Min-
ister of Justice. Kerensky had declined.

In the War Hotel, storm center of the storm
center, we sat and awaited the inevitable. I

153

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

dined that night with a Polish doctor who talked
in low, mysterious tones. All around us were
officers with various degrees of political belief,
ranging from princes suspected of monarchistic
tendencies to the most radical of the radicals.
All were talking in low, mysterious tones. We
spoke of Korniloff.

"He is a very desperate man; a very coura-
geous man," he said. "I was in the battle of
Mukden with him, and he remained when al] the
others of the staff had gone. He is very deter-
mined. I do not know what will happen, but I
know he is a determined man."

This fact no one questioned. Whatever the
political slant of the speaker, it never occurred to
any one to suggest that the man whose military
exploits are almost legendary might have started
something he could not finish.

"He is determined ; but Kerensky is also a de-
termined man," one Russian told me that night.
"So it will be a fight to the finish."

During the evening Arno Dosch Flurot, an
American correspondent, came in to advise me
to leave the hotel and go somewhere else for the
night.

154

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

"The hotel may still be here in the morning,
but it may not, and there is no use in taking
chances," he said.

Rumor had promised me so many tragic ends
— she had cried "Wolf, wolf!" so many times —
that I had become skeptical.

The lobby was swarming with excited officers.
Messengers from the staff and the various em-
bassies dashed in and out all evening. A few
of the officers were loyal to Kerensky, and their
faces were grim and troubled. Most of the
others were waiting with open arms to welcome
the Dictator, and they made no attempt to hide
the joy they felt. For them it was all settled.
Kerensky would be overthrown — Korniloff would
capture the city. The death penalty would be
restored; the leaders of the Soviet would be
hanged. Russia's troubles would be over.

I could not see Russia in such simple terms.
I did not believe that the Russian Revolution
could be understood in the terms of the French
Revolution. I felt very small and alone when,
at midnight, I left the chattering groups and
went up to my little room. I was too engrossed
in what was going to happen to Russia to care the

155

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

least bit about what happened to me. I sat down
before my typewriter and wrote until three, and
then went to bed.

At five o'clock I was awakened from a sound
sleep by a loud knocking. I jumped quickly up
and opened the door. I looked out upon a sea
of cutlasses. The hall was filled with Russian
sailors, perhaps a couple hundred of them, husky
chaps with rifles in their hands, and every rifle
topped with the most bloodthirsty-looking blade
I had ever seen. Life holds no further terrors
for the man or woman who has faced two hun-
dred such weapons all gathered in one spot. An
Atlantic Ocean submarine would seem like a
friendly neighbor come to call.

Still dazed with sleep, I looked at them un-
comprehendingly. What had happened? Were
they Bolsheviki from Kronstadt who had cap-
tured the hotel? Was the city already in the
possession of Korniloff? Was the battle going
on downstairs at that very moment?

There was no one to answer my questions. I
said something in English. A smile passed over
the faces of the half dozen sailors nearest me.
"Nechevo," they said in chorus.

156

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

It is the most reassuring word in the Russian
language — the first I learned, and the last I shall
forget. It means "Never mind," "Don't worry,"
and other things of a kindred nature.

"Kharasho?" I asked.

"Kharasho nechevo," came back the double re-
assurance.

I had learned that, so far as I was concerned
at least, everything was all right. I closed the
door and dressed.

Fifteen minutes later there was a great clatter
of guns and marching feet, and when I went out
into the hall again our visitors had gone. On all
the landings, women, pale and terrified, were
huddled in small groups, talking. A thousand
sailors had taken possession of the hotel, exam-
ined passports, searched rooms, and arrested
fourteen officers. They were not from Kornilof?
or Kerensky, but from the government behind
the government — the Soviet. The Workmen's
and Soldiers' Deputies had decided to take things
into their own hands and arrest all officers whom
they suspected of counter-revolutionary tenden-
cies.

I stopped to talk with some of the women.
157

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

One of them spoke to me in English — beautiful
English. Her husband had been arrested but
released immediately.

"This hotel is a terrible place," she said. "We
Russians are mad, quite mad, all of us. Why do
you stay here when you do not have to? I would
go away — far, far away, to England or your
America."

She was a Russian princess, and from that
morning on I saw much of her. She was ex-
quisitely pretty and completely helpless, a typical
flower of Russian culture. I told her once that
she reminded me of an orchid.

"Ah, orchidee" she said. "I like that; they
are so beautiful." Then, nodding her head with
a wise little smile, she said. "But I know what
you mean. You mean that I am a parasite."

Always after that I called her "Orchidee."
The pathos of her helplessness appealed to me,
and also a certain loyalty that kept her in Petro-
grad with her husband, when most of her friends
had fled to the Caucasus or the Crimea or gone
abroad.

"I love my husband," she told me. "It is very
bourgeois of me, I know, but I can't help it."

158

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

Her husband was an officer in the Guard, and
she lived in hourly terror of his arrest. This
day he had escaped, but there were others who
were not so fortunate. At lunch-time several
familiar figures were absent from the dining-
room, and here and there a woman with troubled
eyes sat alone.

In the following days we lived as much in the
dark as to the actual state of affairs as if we had
been in America.

Kerensky declared Korniloff counter-revolu-
tionist and traitor. The Workmen and Soldiers
in Petrograd, convinced that their Revolution and
their throats were both in danger, worked day
and night in the munition plants, and prepared
to throw a trench around the great city. An-
other part of the populace looked upon Korniloff
as a deliverer, and waited impatiently for his
coming.

All over Russia the people, unable to get the
truth, traded in rumor. Down in the Caucasus
the newspapers came out with lurid details of
battles in the Nevsky and thousands of dead
bodies strewing the streets.

While we were still in the dark as to what was
159

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

happening, I went one morning to the Winter
Palace, and climbed the stairs to Katherine
Breshkovskaya's little room. Through all the
troubled days of the last six months, she had been
the right-hand lieutenant of Kerensky.

I found her, slipping her cloak over her calico
wrapper and starting out to rally the soldiers to
the support of the government. She was seven-
ty-three years old. I had formed the habit of
dropping in on the Babushka, who loved Ameri-
cans and always had a radiant welcome. I
climbed the marble stairs as one would climb a
mountain, to get away from the tangle of petty
things below, to look out over a distant vista, to
see a broad view. Always I came away with the
sense of having been on the heights, close to
something big and fine, with a grandmotherly
kiss upon my cheek and the memory of a friendly
hand-clasp. Once, knowing well the burden of
her answer, but curious to know how she would
phrase it, I asked:

"What do you think of Kerensky?"
She lifted her chin high and, with the ring of
sincere faith in her voice, spoke in her quaint
English:

160

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

"Very well I think of him. He is a square
man, and, what is better, he is not selfish. He
needs no glory. He works only for the welfare
of the people, and not only his people but for all
the Allies, too. He is all around a good man.
It is not strange to have a good man; but to have
a man who is good and brave and clever is un-
usual. I esteem him from the profound of my
soul."

During the Korniloff rebellion she amply
proved her faith; for day and night she went
from barracks to barracks, urging the soldiers to
stand by Kerensky.

From Babushka I went to Red Cross Head-
quarters at the Hotel Europe, to find a dismal
group. Some suave and kindly gentleman had
just confided to Colonel Thompson, quite pleas-
antly, that the hangings would begin at three
o'clock that afternoon.

"If the old crowd comes back to Russia, I 'm
through. I don't want to stay," said the Colonel ;
and Raymond Robins nodded a gloomy second.

If the weight of Russia and of the world had
been upon our shoulders, we could have been no
more serious about it. We wept for the Petro-

161

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

grad front. We wept that only a few miles dis-
tant Russians were killing Russians, and noth-
ing could be done to stop it. We might have
saved our tears. The "savage" forces of Gen-
eral Korniloff and the troops of Kerensky had
taken things into their own hands and were set-
tling them in their own way. They were using
the new Russian method of liquidation — they
were fraternizing. The only shot fired was that
with which one of Korniloff s officers killed him-
self. The soldiers turned the bloody civil war
into a fiasco. The "wild" Cossacks refused to
kill their fellows. Korniloff was captured and
placed under arrest, and the government an-
nounced that the Korniloff adventure had been
liquidated.

The serious consequences were of another na-
ture than bloodshed. The workers declared
themselves through with all attempts to cooper-
ate with the bourgeoisie. Korniloff 's friends ac-
cused Kerensky of double dealing. He was un-
able to explain himself to the satisfaction of his
followers, and they began to distrust him. As
nearly as I can gather from the investigation of
many stories, Kerensky became possessed of

THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

knowledge that Korniloff, probably without his
own knowledge, was being used by counter-revo-
lutionists to overthrow the government. Keren-
sky made overtures to trap Korniloff into admis-
sions that would condemn him. By the time he
had gained his object, he had involved himself so
far that it was impossible to explain. His in-
tentions were unquestionably of the highest, but
his methods were not those that a popular hero
can use and remain on the high pedestal that his
followers demand.

The first attempt to instal a man on horseback
resulted in driving the radical forces further and
further to the left and creating a mass solidarity
that was ultimately to prove fatal to the existing
order.

The Korniloff adventure paved the way for
the Bolsheviki Revolution.

163

CHAPTER IX

THE CENTEABALT MAKES AN EXCEPTION

SINCE the days of the March Revolution,
women have not been permitted aboard the Rus-
sian fleet. The sailors, with the memory of Ras-
putin still fresh in their minds, settled this as
soon as they took command.

"Women have played so much hell in politics
in the past, we better not take any chances in the
future," one of them suggested.

For seven months the rule was rigidly kept.
One afternoon in October, I, all unmindful of
the prohibition, walked up the gang-plank of the
Polar Star as she lay on the gray waters of the
Gulf of Finland.

Half hidden in the heavy gray autumn mist
were the battleships of the Baltic Fleet, decked
in their proud new names of revolution. There
was the one time Nicholas II, now the Tavarisch
(Comrade). There, also, were the Grazhdanin

164

AN EXCEPTION

(Citizen) , formerly the Tsarevitch; and, most im-
portant of all, the Respublica ( Republic )> Not
far away lay a wounded cruiser recently returned
from battle with the Germans in their attack on
the islands at the entrance to the Gulf. A
British submarine, come unscathed through the
fighting, rode safe and snug in the tidy little
harbor.

Mr. Williams was with me that afternoon, and
an English friend of the Polar Star's captain.
The captain gave me a puzzled, almost frightened
look as he saw me stepping aboard. The Eng-
lishman introduced us, and explained our desire
to see the famous yacht.

"I 'm very sorry," the captain said politely,
"but women are not allowed aboard the fleet. It
is a rule of the committee."

I must have looked my disappointment. The
captain glanced sympathetically at me, then at
a closed door at the end of a long passage.

"The committee is meeting in there in the
Tsar's quarter. Perhaps they will make an ex-
ception. I will ask," he said.

If a Russian naval officer had been told, a year
before, that the day would come when he would

165

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

have to ask permission of the sailors to bring a
guest aboard his own command, he would have
sent for the ship's doctor and ordered a padded
cell prepared for his informant.

I thanked him, and he disappeared. A few
minutes later he returned. The permission had
been granted. He led the way into the officers'
saloon and from there to his own cabin.

All of the sacred precincts of the old days
were closed to us. They were still sacred, but
sacred to the new owners of the Russian navy —
the delegates of the fleet, the Russian sailors.

The captain was speaking:

"They used to cover this with velvet when the
Tsar was on board," he said, with a sweep of his
hand. "I 'm sorry I can not show you the Tsar's
quarters. You would be interested. They have
left the grand piano and some of the most valu-
able things in Petrograd."

He led us to a point where we could peep curi-
ously down a long passage, lined on either side
with the cabins de luxe of the Tsarevitch, the
Grand Duchess Titania, and other members of
the Imperial family, to a closed door at the end.

166

AN EXCEPTION

Behind that closed door was the organization
of "common" sailors ruling the Russian waters —
one of the most characteristically new things in
all new Russia.

While the captain turned to speak to a soldier
who had come up, we held a hurried consultation,
mustered our various credentials, and appealed to
the ship's officer once more to act in the capacity
of go-between and ask the committee to receive us.

Again he left, and we waited anxiously for the
closed door to open. A few minutes later, in the
great saloon where Nicholas II once dispensed
hospitality and favors, sixty Russian sailors, sit-
ting in daily session in their regular headquar-
ters, gallantly offered me the freedom of the
Baltic Fleet.

The president arose, shook hands with us, and
made a brief speech of welcome to the Americans,
asking the captain to interpret it to us. Then
the secretary arose, and on behalf of the com-
mittee invited us to dine at the Sailors' Club in
Helsingfors that night.

"We sent some one to telephone for our band-
master who is an American," he said. "Until he

167

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

comes we will go on with the business of our
meeting, if you will permit."

The business before the Baltic Fleet concerned
soldiers on the Riga front. News of the distress
of the northern army had reached them, and they
were collecting money and buying warm cloth-
ing to send to the men who were hungry and
cold in the trenches.

With the help of the captain, we had discov-
ered so much when the band-master arrived.

In that committee meeting were eight Men-
sheviki, three Anarchist communists, nine Social
Revolutionists, and forty-five Bolsheviki. Those
figures were the most significant I found in all
of Russia. Before the Korniloff rebellion there
had been only eighteen Bolsheviki in the com-
mittee, and no Anarchists. The men were
chosen by the vote of the entire fleet, and they
reflected the complete swing to the left that was
taking place in Russia from Vladivostok to the
Black Sea.

The sailors, almost to a man, believe in the
principles of internationalism, in the socialization
of land and the control of industry by the work-
ers. To them the Revolution meant the ultimate

168

AN EXCEPTION

realization of all these dreams. Up to the time
of the Korniloff rebellion, they were inclined to
adopt the Mensheviki methods and to be patient.
The Korniloff affair, regarded by them as an
attack on the Revolution, swept away patience
and shoved them into the ranks of the extremists.

Patriotism, in the old sense, was absolutely
lacking among the sailors, as it was among the
workmen; but there was a more burning form
of patriotism aboard the fleet in October than
any inspired in the past by the thought of the
Tsar or the greatness of all the Russias — pa-
triotism for the Revolution. The sailor, partly
because he is of a more adventurous and daring
spirit, partly because he has more education and
has drunk more deeply from the fountain of rad-
ical books, naturally took a more extreme posi-
tion than the soldier. There was only fifteen
per cent, illiteracy in the Russian navy, while
seventy-five per cent, of the soldiers were un-
able to read or write.

The committee governing the fleet was com-
posed of six sub-committees. Food for officers
and men was controlled by the supply commit-
tee, which decided the menus. The sailors gave

169

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

themselves tea and bread and butter at eight
o'clock; soup and meat at twelve; potatoes, rice,
or kasha at six; and tea again at eleven. On
Sundays fruit compote was added. The officers'
fare was much more varied and more extensive.

A komplectatsea, or "make-up committee,"
decided all problems relating to the crews. A
"selection committee" studied the men to find
promising material to make officers. The judi-
ciary committee was the new disciplinarian.
Disputes between officers and men were sub-
mitted to it, and when the offenses were serious
civil lawyers were employed to defend the men.

Discipline in the old days was entirely in the
hands of the officers, from whom there was no
appeal. If an officer was naturally an amiable
fellow, fortunate were the men who served under
him. If his good nature was dependent upon his
luck at cards, the quality of his wine, or the
momentary condition of his department of the
interior, the lot of the sailor might not be a happy
one.

Fortunately for the sailors, the average of
humanity is fairly decent, whether it be Russian
or anything else, and there were men in the Rus-

170

AN EXCEPTION

sian navy who did not abuse their power. But
there were enough of the other kind to stir a deep
and intense bitterness in the breast of the Russian
sailor, and this hatred found tragic utterance
when the Revolution came.

The Englishman who was with us had been
aboard one of the ships during the March Revo-
lution.

"In the passion of the moment, they killed
some of the good ones and left some of the bad
ones," he said. "Just one man was killed on our
ship. He was a high-handed, hot-headed chap,
and when they told him of the Revolution he
scoffed at them — said there wasn't any new
regime in Petrograd, and never would be. His
servant whipped out a gun. 'We '11 show you
whether there is a new regime,' he said, and shot
him."

Many of the crews simply arrested their offi-
cers, and some asked them to sign a paper de-
claring they would support the Revolution. As
nearly as I can learn, sixty-five men were killed
on the Baltic Sea Fleet, and a hundred on the
Black Sea Fleet. The first day of the Revolu-
tion, the sailors revenged themselves on the whole

171

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

order of discipline, and it was hot blood that
determined life and death. When the commit-
tee was formed, the killing was stopped.

At the time of the Korniloff rebellion, four
officers belonging to one of the ships were taken
out and killed, against the protest of the Cen-
tral Committee. Once more the sailors, mad-
dened by what they believed to be an attack on
the Revolution, took things into their own hands.
They put three questions to their officers:

"Do you belong to the Soviet and Kerensky,
or Korniloff?

"If Korniloff takes Petrograd, will you go to
take it from him?

"If Korniloff tells you to go to Petrograd and
fight the Provisional Government, will you go?"

Their answers to these questions saved or cost
them their lives. The sailors formed their own
committee and pronounced the death sentence.

The lot of the naval officer in Russia was no
more enviable than that of the army officer; but
it was a direct and logical result of the regime
that made masters of the few and slaves of the
many.

At Viborg and at some of the other points, the
178

Korniloff, his staff and Cossack bodyguard from the " Wild Division'

Bicycle troops to the rescue of Kerensky

Baltic sailors' bayonets speak for the Soviet

A dining-room in the Matrosski Klub (Sailors' Club), Helsingfors

AN EXCEPTION

fate of the officers was far worse than at Hel-
singfors, and the stories told about the deaths
they died are not pretty ones. The training and
tradition of a naval officer unfitted him for faith
in the new order, contradicted the belief of a life-
time and the heritage of generations. The chasm
that yawned between officers and men was too
wide to be bridged in a day. A few made an
honest effort to cross over it, and the men seemed
pathetically grateful to them. Others took or-
ders from the sailors for the same reason that
the sailors had once taken orders from them —
they were afraid to do otherwise. Some were
merely biding their time, convinced that the
topsy-turvy order would change and they would
come into their "own" again. But one thing
was evident here as elsewhere in Russia: that,
whatever happens, nobody's "own" will ever
again be quite what it has been in the past.

Admiral Verderevsky, the Minister of Ma-
rine, said that discipline was destroyed at its
root not at the moment of the Revolution, but
long before; that new and democratic forms
should have been created long ago; and that it
could never be restored by the lash or the guillo-

173

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tine. Verderevsky blamed former Minister of
War Goutchkoff for lack of discipline in the
navy.

"He called me a pessimist," said Verderevsky.
"He told me the fleet was bad, but the army mag-
nificent. If my pessimism had been interpreted
differently then, we should have had a new dis-
cipline this autumn."

Before the committee adjourned, on the after-
noon of our visit, they puzzled their heads over
many problems of discipline ; and the young sec-
retary, Theodore Averitchkin, who took us to
the Sailors' Club, shook his head seriously as he
unfolded the difficulties.

"Instruction is what we need," he said, as we
drove through the spick-and-span streets of tidy
little Helsingfors. "When the people got free-
dom, they forgot that they had not learned for
three hundred years, and the masses who did n't
know anything understood freedom in their own
way. The people who should educate us sit
back and call us traitors. We are not traitors-
it is bourgeois lying that is spread all over Eu-
rope about us. Tolstoy said that calumny was
like a snowball, gathering snow as it rolls, and

174

AN EXCEPTION

becoming bigger and bigger. Only those who
are without honor can say that we are traitors.
They forget the hundreds of our comrades who
are in the grave of the Baltic Sea. There are
not, and there never will be, traitors in the Baltic
Fleet. Why don't the people who talk so much
about traitors come and give us some instruction?
They don't want to part with their fine automo-
biles and beautiful women. We are not asking
for palaces and automobiles. We are asking
only that all shall have a chance to learn and
enough to eat."

Averitchkin spoke with the burning ardor of a
convinced propagandist, and there was no doubt
of his sincerity.

The Sailors' Club was a distinct surprise. I
expected to see the usual Russian meeting-place:
a big, stuffy, barnlike hall with a litter of dirt
and cigarette stubs underfoot. Instead, we
drew up before a five-story building, and six
husky, clear-eyed sailor boys opened the door and
welcomed us into the lobby of a first-class hotel.
There were velvet carpets underfoot, cut-glass
chandeliers overhead, palms and bay trees sta-
tioned at correct intervals, and not even the ghost

175

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of a cigarette stub in sight. The easy-chairs
were filled with men in sailors' uniforms, talking
comfortably in small groups. In the dining-
rooms others were gathered around little tables
with snowy linen and shining silver.

The head commissariat led the way, beaming
with pride over my compliments. As we went
from place to place, he explained that the club
belonged to all the sailors of the world, and
that any man would find a welcome there.
There were ten thousand active members, and
the men on shore leave spent most of their time
there. Meals were served at cost, and the or-
ganization was run like any millionaires' club
to cater to the comforts of its members. In
the days before the Revolution no sailor would
have been allowed in such a building. Now the
place was swarming with them, and they graced
it as to the manner born.

The bourgeois feared and hated the sailor
most of all the revolutionists; but he was the
cleanest, staunchest, finest-looking man I found
in revolutionary Russia. There was real stamina
here. He knew what he wanted, and was de-
termined to get it. War-weariness played little

176

AN EXCEPTION

part in his psychology. He was willing to fight
Germans, if he believed Germans to be the ene-
mies of revolution. Six hundred of him formed
a volunteer battalion of death and went to the
Riga front to fight with the soldiers in the
trenches, and the battalion was practically annihi-
lated.

If the majority of the Russian sailors could
have been convinced that to save Free Rus-
sia they must fight Germany, they would have
fought. When the actual existence of their ves-
sels was threatened, as it was in the Gulf of Riga
in September, they did fight. Patriotism for
their Revolution and pride in ownership of their
fleet were uppermost. The first question the
sailors on the Respublica asked Mr. Williams
was:

"Are the American ships as clean as this?"

177

CHAPTER X

THE RISE OF THE PROLETARIAT

WINTER and the Bolsheviki came to Russia on
the same chill breeze, and each brought a strange
new world.

Late one afternoon in early November, I
walked through the gray streets of Petrograd,
and shivered. It was not cold as the thermom-
eter speaks, but cold as a room where death
awaits a tardy undertaker — desolate, ugly, for-
bidding. Autumn was already dead, and the
burial long overdue.

The last copper-colored leaf had been stripped
from the trees and trampled in the dust some
days since. The gray trunks of the birches were
nude, and conscious of it. The city was wrapped
in a futile cloak of fog, too thin to hide its naked-
ness, and every barren shrub and battered cornice
pleaded with delayed winter to cover its shame.

I turned my face away from the Summer Gar-
den, and walked quickly past. A million years

178

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

had passed since that spring day, six months be-
fore, when the sparrows occupied themselves with
house-building in the green leaves, and Vera and
Ivan on the benches below devoted themselves to
castle-building.

Death was in the air. At that moment I hated
the city, which I had come to love as one loves a
naughty child for all its faults and virtues, its
hopes, passions, potentialities, and failures — for
the sum of its stormy, troubled self.

I hurried back to my blue-and-white room,
drew the curtains, turned on all the lights, and
curled up on the couch to bury myself in a book
of verse and shut it out.

The next afternoon at three o'clock I reached
for the desk telephone to call the American
consul. There was no answer. I pushed the
hook up and down, tempting fate in the shape
of an irate operator; but it produced no re-
sponse.

"Has it come?" I asked myself, and laughed
at the question. It had been the current one in
Petrograd for weeks. Every time the electric
light failed, the water was turned off, or some one
banged a door or dropped a block of wood, Petro-

179

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

grad jumped automatically to the same conclu-
sion: it has come!

I put down the receiver, straightened the pa-
pers on my desk, and started for the censor's
office. A new sentry was pacing up and down
outside the hotel. On the Morskaya, in the block
below, the armored car in the courtyard of the
telephone exchange had moved nearer the side-
walk, and was flaunting its guns ominously at the
passing throng.

I hurried on, bent upon getting my letters
ready for the weekly express. Mr. Novometzky,
the kindly censor, who softened one's heart to the
whole tribe of blue-pencilers, shook his head de-
spairingly when I entered.

"Well, it has come," he said. "There is
trouble again. These are bad times for poor
Russia."

I left him, and walked briskly toward the Nev-
sky on the trail of a possible courier who would
carry my mail across the world to San Francisco.
At the Moika a crowd had gathered around a big
limousine. Three soldiers held a brief parley
with the chauffeur, then one of them climbed into
the vacant seat beside him. Farther down the

180

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

street another car was stopped, then another, and
another.

I dined that night with a French aviator, and
afterward we stood in the lobby and watched a
Battalion of Death file through the whirling door
and encamp on the marble floor.

At ten o'clock we wandered into the black
streets. The Nevsky was quiet. The Palace
square was almost deserted. Along the Neva,
at the entrance to each of the bridges, a group of
soldiers crowded around a log fire. Here and
there in the center of the circle was a small boy,
thrilling as small boys do the world over at the
lateness of the hour, the bigness of his compan-
ions, and the adventure of the moment. A few
steps away from each of these groups was a
wagon filled with ammunition.

Back in the hotel, I met Baron B., whose title,
estates, and sympathies were all bound up in the
hope of a return of the monarchy.

"Well, we have got them on the run this time,"
he said.

Only a week before I had sat next to him at a
dinner where, before my amazed eyes, they
toasted the Tsar and sang the old tabooed na-

181

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tional anthem. Our host, an Englishman, had
introduced the baron as a great officer and an ab-
solutely fearless human being.

"He helped to stop the retreat from Tarnopol
on the southwestern front after the July offen-
sive," he said. "You ought to have seen him lin-
ing up those deserters before the firing squad.
He made quick work of the bloody cowards."

I urged the baron to tell me of his experiences,
and shuddered as I listened. He had nothing
but contempt for Kerensky, his commander-in-
chief, and was eager for his downfall. His only
fear was that the Soviet would not take over the
government.

"Two weeks of the Bolsheviki, and we will be
able to lick these people into shape," he said.
"The worse things get, the sooner they will be
willing to listen to reason. You don't know the
Russians."

"We 've got them on the run this time" — what
could it mean? No good to Kerensky, I was
sure — no ultimate good to the masses of the Rus-
sian people, if Baron B. could have his way.

There was nothing in the situation that night
that augured well for Kerensky 's government.

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THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

He was like a man poised on a tight-rope. The
cry, "All power to the Soviet!" grew louder and
more insistent with every passing hour. The
Russian workers, the youngest proletarian group
in the world, were the most class-conscious and
determined, and — they had guns.

The fleet was Bolshevist — I had no doubt of
that. The Petrograd garrison was Bolshevist.
Every report from the front indicated that the
men in the trenches had swung farther and
farther to the left. The land and peace hunger
clamored for immediate satisfaction.

Kerensky, trying like the true democrat he was
to please every one, succeeded in pleasing no one.
He had lost touch with the masses. Attacked
from above and below, from within and without,
there seemed little hope for him. Those who
should have been behind him, with every energy
and influence they possessed, were secretly will-
ing his downfall, and some of them were plotting
to bring it about. Individual members of the
Allied military missions, still clinging to the old
belief that Russia could be saved by a man on
horseback, in spite of the Korniloff fiasco, were
meeting behind closed doors, where they dis-

183

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

cussed, not the way to save Kerensky, but the way
to put a dictator in his place. The names of
Korniloff and Savinkoff were again bandied
about where ever two or three military men were
gathered together.

Poor Kerensky! Too big, and not big
enough. Any one of his problems was a man-
sized job. He was packing the load of a broken
industrial and economic machine, inherited from
the regime of the Tsar, a corrupt, inefficient, and
disloyal bureaucracy, and a betrayed and disillu-
sioned army. His uncomprehending military
partners, the Allies, were urging the impossible,
and refusing to grant the demand of the Russian
masses for a statement of war aims and a publi-
cation of the secret treaties, without which Keren-
sky could no longer hold the faith of his follow-
ers.

Dark forces of the old order were working with
German intriguers to augment the chaos, and
above and beyond and beneath everything was
the honest cry of the people for "Peace to the
world!" and "Land to the peasants!"

The Bolsheviki promised peace and land.
They promised more: they promised that the

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THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

workers of the world should "arise and put a stop
to war and capitalistic exploitation forever."

They were dreaming big dreams in Russia that
night; scheming big schemes; and they were not
unaware that the dreams and schemes would be
used in the future by the rest of the world, per-
haps as patterns by which to model, perhaps only
as horrible examples and tragic warnings.

It was an hour in which one needed all of
one's faith to believe that the human march is
forward, no matter how many members of the
family are lost on the way.

At daybreak a company of Red Guards from
the Viborg factory district — men whose only mil-
itary equipment was a rifle slung over the shoul-
der, and a conviction that the hour of the pro-
letariat had come, and that they were the defend-
ers of the cause of the workers of the world —
came to a halt on the north bank of the Neva.
The bridges were guarded by cadets from the
Engineers' School, placed there the night before,
when Kerensky had ordered them opened. At
the point of their guns, the factory workers or-
dered the officers to close them again. The engi-
neers obeyed, and the street-cars started blithely

185

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

on their way back and forth across the river, just
as if nothing had happened.

At the same moment, two detachments of Bol-
shevist soldiers and sailors, acting under orders
from the Military Revolutionary Committee,
took possession of the telephone exchange and the
General Staff. It was all done so swiftly and so
quietly that the Bolshevik battle was half won
before Petrograd awoke to the knowledge that
civil war was on.

It was nine o'clock when Petroff brought me
tea and word that the Bolsheviki had that min-
ute taken possession of the hotel. PetrorFs as-
tounding news sent me hurriedly into the hall,
and into the arms of a squad of soldiers. The
young officer in command detained me.

"Amerikanka Korrespondent," I explained,
and indicated a desire to go downstairs.

"Pazhal'sta, pazhal'sta!" he said, bowing low,
and motioning his men to let me pass.

At the head of the winding staircase groups of
frightened women were gathered, searching the
marble lobby below with troubled eyes. Nobody
seemed to know what had happened. The Bat-
talion of Death had walked out in the night, with-

186

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

out firing so much as a single shot. Each floor
was crowded with soldiers and Red Guardsmen,
who went from room to room, searching for arms,
and arresting officers suspected of anti-Bolshevik
sympathies. The landings were guarded by sen-
tries, and the lobby was swarming with men in
faded uniforms. Two husky, bearded peasant
soldiers were stationed behind the counter, and
one in the cashier's office kept watch over the
safe. Two machine-guns poked their ominous
muzzles through the entry-way. My letter of
credit was inside the safe, and the only other
money I had was an uncashed check for eight
hundred rubles.

I started for the National City Bank on the
slender chance of finding it open. I was just in
time. Within the hour the Bolsheviki captured
the State Bank, and all the others promptly
closed their doors.

On my way back I walked through the Dvort-
sovy Square. Four armored cars were drawn
up under the shadow of the mighty granite shaft
in front of the Winter Palace, their guns point-
ing significantly at the palace windows. Flam-
ing red flags were freshly painted on their gray

187

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

sides, and on one in large letters was the word
"Proletariat." A crowd of perhaps twenty me-
chanics and chauffeurs tinkered with guns and
engines, making ready for instant action. Oc-
casionally a man looked up from the nut he was
tightening to offer some comment on the situa-
tion. The whereabouts of Kerensky was the
chief topic of the moment.

"He is not there now," said one of them, point-
ing with his wrench in the direction of the palace.
"He ran away to Finland in the night."

"He is not in Finland," said another scorn-
fully. "He went away to get troops. He is
coming back to fight us."

"They say he escaped to the front disguised as
a Red Cross nurse," said a third, with a sneer that
produced a loud burst of laughter from his com-
panions.

Inside the palace, seated around the mahogany
table in the great council chamber, where the
Tsar of all the Russias had spoken commands
that made an empire tremble, fifteen members of
the Provisional Government grimly waited. In
the hall outside the door ten military school
cadets kept watch. These, the women's regi-

188

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

ment, and a company of cadets encamped on the
lower floor, were all that stood between them and
the rising army of the workers. To them the
whereabouts of Kerensky was no secret. He had
gone in search of loyal troops who would rise to
the protection of the Provisional Government,
and upon his success or failure they must stand
or fall.

It was noon when I returned to St. Isaac's
Square. The Marinsky Palace, where the Coun-
cil of the Republic was meeting, — once the home
of the Council of the Empire, mouth-piece of
absolutism in old Russia, — was surrounded by
sailors, soldiers, and Red Guardsmen. The
palace guards offered no resistance when a crowd
of sailors demanded admission. They swarmed
through the entrances, and appeared simultane-
ously in various parts of the hall. A sailor, a
tam-o'-shanter on the back of his head and long
ribbon streamers flying out behind, stepped up
to President Avksentieff.

"Stop talking. Go home," he said. "There
is no Council of the Republic!"

Avksentieff and his followers demurred for a
moment; then, looking around the room at the

189

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

men in blue, they adjourned, and filed into the
square. The Council of the Republic, hope of
Tseretelli, Cheidze, and those other moderate So-
cialists who were trying so desperately to stave
off the final break, was at an end.

The more radical Socialist members went to
Smolney Institute, where the delegates from all
parts of Russia were flocking to the second
All-Russian Congress of Soviets.

At three o'clock I started for Smolney, a little
old revolutionist whom we Americans all called
"Daddy R.," trotting beside me. We walked
down the Morskaya toward the telephone ex-
change. Just opposite we halted. Coming to-
ward us, in regular marching formation, was a
company of military cadets, strapping, handsome
fellows from the officers' school. Before they
reached the building, the commander halted
them. Half of the number walked deliberately
past the armored car, turned, and approached
from the other side. A volley of rifle fire broke
the stillness, and the crowd scurried to the cover
of doorways and side streets. A gray-bearded,
benevolent-looking dvornik dragged me inside a
courtyard, where a dozen other people sought

190

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

shelter, and clanged the great iron door shut be-
hind us. A beggar, with legs cut off at the
knees, hobbled beside me.

"Crack! Crack!" went the rifles again — then
a moment of breathless silence. The dvornik
cautiously opened the door a few inches, and I
put my head out. The street was deserted. The
cadets were crouched in kneeling positions on the
sidewalks against the wall, guns pointing at the
telephone office.

The dvorwk pushed the door shut again, and
this time he locked it and motioned us to follow.
We crossed a courtyard, and turned into a dark,
narrow tunnel, through which we picked our way
over piles of debris and up and down stone steps
till we came into the open a block below.

By another route Daddy R. and I made our
way back to the M orskaya. I stepped to the
middle of the street to see what was happening,
but a Russian officer motioned me away.

"They will fire again in a minute," he said.
"They are trying to take the telephone exchange
from the Bolsheviki."

He had no sooner finished speaking than the
front of the building began to belch lead in a

191

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

shower that sent the cadets hurrying in search of
shelter. An armored car hove in sight from the
opposite direction, opened fire, and completed
the rout of the attacking force.

We hurried toward the Nevsky. The bridge
across the Moika was bristling with guns. Four
armored cars barred the way, and a crowd of
soldiers and sailors worked rapidly, throwing up
a barricade across the street. One man was
stretched flat on the wooden pavement, prepared
to fire a machine-gun from the protection of a
telegraph-pole. The Red Guards waved the
passengers back from the bridge, but the tracks
were left open, and the cars went back and forth
unhindered. We tried to make our way through
the old France Hotel, which wanders all over the
block between the Morskaya and the Moika, and
out on to the canal by another entrance. Again
we were turned back. Another volley of gun-
shot sent us scurrying to the shelter of a basement
shop.

It was nearly five when we reached the en-
trance of Smolney. The great building, until a
few months before a private seminary where the
feminine flower of Russian aristocracy was culti-

192

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

vated in seclusion, had suddenly become an ar-
senal, bristling with guns and swarming with
armed men.

Upstairs the Workmen's and Soldiers' Depu-
ties were gathering for the Congress of Soviets.
They were coming together to decide whether the
Bolshevik demand of "All power to the Soviets"
should be granted. It was a question already
being answered by the voice of the guns.

The meeting was to open at five. At nine
the crowd in the great, chaste white assembly
room was still waiting for action. Outside, in
the dimly lighted corridors, hundreds of men with
muddy boots tramped back and forth, in and out
of committee rooms. Soon after nine, a dele-
gate from the Menshevik group announced that
his party was still in caucus, unable to come to an
agreement, and asked for another hour's delay.
A murmur of disapproval ran through the room.
Nerves were at trigger-tension. For once, Rus-
sian patience seemed to be about to reach its
limit.

Another hour passed. Suddenly through the
windows opening on the Neva came a steady
boom! boom! boom!

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"What's that? What's that?" asked the
sailor of the soldier, and the soldier of the work-
man.

A man with pale face and blazing eyes fought
his way through the crowd on to the platform.

"The cruiser Aurora is shelling our comrades
in the Winter Palace. We demand that this
bloodshed shall be stopped instantly!" he shouted.

"It 's a lie!" said one of them.

"It 's just another trick of the bourgeois to
divide our forces !" said a second.

A few men hurried from the hall; but the
crowd had received too many startling rumors
that day to be much disturbed by another one.

Again came the boom! boom! boom! from the
direction of the Neva. Again the murmur of
question.

"It 's a motor-lorry cranking up in the court-
yard below," some one ventured.

"The people upstairs are moving tables
around," another suggested.

That moment the attention of the crowd was
diverted by the arrival of a man of medium height,
square-shouldered, lean, dark, and tense-looking.
His face was white, and his black hair brushed

194*

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

back from a wide forehead, black mustache, and
small black beard, his black jacket and flowing
black tie, still further emphasized the alabaster
whiteness of his skin. He stood within a few
feet of me, one hand in his pocket, and with
sharp, quick glances took the measure of that
strange sea of faces.

"Here 's Trotzky!" whispered the man beside
me. "Come, I want you to meet him."

Before I had time to acquiesce or protest, I
found a lean hand grasping mine in a strong,
characteristic handshake. We stood there for a
few moments, talking of inconsequential things,
but all of us charged with the tensity of the hour.
There was keen intelligence here, nerve, a cer-
tain uncompromising streak of iron, a sense of
power; yet I little suspected I was talking to
the man whose name within a few brief weeks
would be a familiar word on every tongue — the
most-talked-of human being in an age of spec-
tacular figures.

At twenty minutes to eleven our conversation
was abruptly cut short by the appearance of
Dan, who opened the meeting. It was Dan's
swan-song. Only a few weeks before, in this

195

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

gathering, his voice would have been law; but
with the swing of the workers to the left his power
was gone. The mass had broken with its lead-
ers, and every comment from the crowd indicated
more definitely the irrevocability of that break.*/?

Dan announced that he would not make a
speech, declaring that the hour in which his com-
rades were being shelled in the Winter Palace,
and self-sacrificingly sticking to their posts, was
not the hour for oratory. He said that five hun-
dred and thirteen delegates had been seated, and
the new presidium of twenty-five members would
contain fourteen Bolsheviki.

The spokesmen of the various parties then an-
nounced the names of their representatives.
Leaders of the social patriotic groups, of the
Mensheviki, and Socialist Revolutionists refused
to take their place in the presidium, and the Men-
she vik Internationalists declared they would de-
lay joining the presidium until certain questions
were settled.

The Bolsheviki, with Nicolai Lenin and Zeno-
vieff at their head, climbed to the platform. A
great cheer went up from the Bolshevik support-
ers. Lenin and Zenovieff , who had been in hid-

196

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

ing since the July riots, had that day come out
of their holes to take a historic part in this new
Revolution.

When the ovation had died down, Dan briefly
stated the object of the meeting before relin-
quishing his place to Trotzky.

"The business of the Convention," said he,
"divides itself into three heads: a governmental
crisis, the question of war and peace, and the
Constituent Assembly."

"Take up the question of peace first," shouted
a soldier in the crowd.

It was all that was needed to set the indigna-
tion of the Mensheviki flaming.

"Tavarischi, forty minutes have passed since
we announced that our comrades were being
shelled in the Winter Palace, and the cruiser
Aurora is still firing. We demand that this
bloodshed be stopped immediately."

"A committee has already been sent out,"
some one else declared.

Martoff, perhaps the ablest of the Menshevik
Internationalists, took the platform, and in a
voice ringing with indignation demanded imme-
diate settlement of the governmental crisis.

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"If this convention wants to be the voice of
revolutionary democracy, it must not sit idly by
before the rapidly developing civil war that may
result in a disastrous explosion of the counter-
revolution," he said. "When the question of the
organization of the government is being settled
by the conspiracy of a single one of the revolu-
tionary parties, we are challenged by only one
problem; the immediate warding off of this im-
pending civil war."

He proposed the appointment of a committee
for negotiating with other Socialist parties and
organizations to stop the rapidly developing
clash.

The resolution was passed ; but, instead of im-
mediately appointing a committee, Trotzky per-
mitted the convention to listen to the opinions of
delegate after delegate on a number of subjects
not pertaining to the question.

It was a critical moment in the history of the
Russian Revolution. Perhaps it was some bitter
memory of insults he had suffered at the hands
of these other leaders, perhaps it was simply the
natural inability of the Russian to compromise,
or a combination of these and other motives, that

198

THE RISE OF PROLETARIAT

made Trotzky delay action, and thereby toss
away his opportunity for compromise. Prob-
ably even he himself could not say.

Meanwhile the guns on the Neva continued
their eloquent "boom! boom! boom!

Kharash, a delegate from the Twelfth Army,
got the floor.

"While a proposition for peaceful settlement
is being introduced here, a battle goes on in the
streets of Petrograd," he said. "The Winter
Palace is being shelled. The specter of civil war
is rising. The Mensheviki and Socialist Revo-
lutionists repudiate all that is going on here, and
stubbornly resist all attempts to seize the gov-
ernment."

"He does not represent the Twelfth Army!"
cried a soldier from the ranks. "The army de-
mands all power to the Soviets."

Twenty others were on their feet the same in-
stant:

"Staff! Staff! He comes from the Staff!
He is not a soldier!" they shouted angrily, shak-
ing their fists at the delegate from the Twelfth.

Pandemonium broke loose. The shouts of
the men inside the building drowned the boom

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of the guns outside. In the midst of it a man
demanded and got the floor.

"We are leaving the convention," he said.
"We can stand no more! We are going un-
armed to die with our comrades in the Winter
Palace."

A hush fell over the crowd. It was broken
only by the sound of shuffling feet as the speaker
led the way to the door, followed by a hundred or
more of the conservative revolutionists, who filed
quietly out.

At midnight, with three fellow correspondents,
I left the atmosphere of that memorable meeting,
gray with smoke and charged with battle, and
went in search of passes that would permit me to
go to the Winter Palace.

200

CHAPTER XI

THE FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

HOWEVER much the rest of Petrograd talked
that night, there was one spot in the storm-tossed
city where no words were wasted. This was the
office of the Voina Revoliutsiony Komitiet (Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee), sprung sud-
denly and quietly into an existence shrouded in
deep mystery.

Alex Gomberg, Russian product of New
York's East Side, with an American habit of
providing against emergencies, suggested that it
would be useless to attempt to get through the
Bolshevik lines without a pass from this com-
mittee. Gomberg, odd little bundle of material-
ism and idealism, who had a deep love for the
country of his adoption which his scoffing cyni-
cism could not hide, never lost a chance to do a
good turn to America or Americans. Though
he could not resist the home call of revolution,
he said he would rather be a messenger-boy in

201

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

New York than President of Russia. As a
friend of Trotzky, known to the members of the
all-powerful committee, he undertook to arrange
the necessary permits.

He led the way down the dimly lighted corridor
to the farther end. A young fair-haired boy met
us in an outer office, took our names and request,
and disappeared into the next room, shutting the
door behind him. We stared curiously after
him. Beyond that door were the men who were
directing the siege and capture of Petrograd—
directing it so efficiently that in the days that
followed, the enemies of the Bolsheviki insisted
the committee was composed of Germans, be-
cause Russians were incapable of such perfect
organization.

When the inside door opened again the fair-
haired boy reappeared with the passes in his
hand. Mine was typewritten on a bit of paper
torn from a scratch-pad, numbered "Five," and
stated simply:

"The Military Revolutionary Committee of
the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Depu-
ties allows Miss Bessie Beatty free passage all
over the city."

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FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

That scrap of paper was to prove the open
sesame to many closed doors before the gray
dawn of morning. It bore the blue seal of the
committee, the only signature capable of com-
manding the slightest sign of respect from a Rus-
sian bayonet that night.

The Smolney Institute is excellently located to
provide seclusion for a young women's seminary,
but in the middle of a cold night it seemed a long
dark way from anywhere. Walking down the
stairs, we speculated upon the improbability of
finding an izvostchik abroad at such an hour.

Down in the courtyard a huge motor-truck was
cranking up for departure. Its only occupants
were three sailors, a young Cossack soldier with
a cape of shaggy black fur that hung to his heels,
and a Red Guardsman. We hailed them, and
Mr. Gomberg shouted a request to be taken to
town. It was drowned by the sound of the en-
gine. He repeated it in louder tones. The
sailor looked dubiously at me and at Louise
Bryant, the other woman member of the party.

"It 's a dangerous trip," he said. "We are
going out to distribute proclamations, and we are
almost certain to be shot at."

£03

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

We looked at one another for a moment, con-
sidered that it was probably our only chance to
reach the Winter Palace, and asked to be allowed
to take the risk. Two strong hands came over
the side to pull me up, and two sailors sitting on
a board across the body of the truck arose to give
us their seats. They held a hurried consultation,
then asked us to stand again. They had de-
cided that this exposed position would be too
dangerous for women. The Cossack lad in the
shaggy cape spread some proclamations on the
floor of the car.

"Sit here," he said, "and when the shooting be-
gins you can lie flat on your backs and keep your
heads low."

A bundle of rifles lay on the floor under my
knees, and as we started off over the cobbles I
grabbed a chain and held fast to keep from being
bumped out. The streets were like black canons.
Apparently there was not a human being abroad ;
yet every time the sailor tossed a handful of white
leaflets into the air, men came darting mysteri-
ously from doorways and courtyards to catch
them.

The Cossack towered above me, rifle in hand,
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FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

with eyes searching the dark for signs of danger.
At the street intersections we slowed up, and
groups of soldiers gathered around the bonfires
crowded close to the truck for news from Smol-
ney. They peered with curious and startled eyes
into our unexpected faces, then hurried back to
the circle of light around the blazing birch-wood
logs. During one of these pauses Mr. Gomberg
grabbed a proclamation and read it to us :

"TO RUSSIAN CITIZENS

"The power has gone over to the organ of the Petro-
grad Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, the
War Revolutionary Committee, which is at the head of
the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.

"The cause for which the people strive : immediate
democratic peace, abolition of pomieschik property on
land, workmen's control, the creation of a Soviet gov-
ernment— this business is done.

"Long live the Revolution of workmen, soldiers, and
peasants. ,, ,,

"WAR REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE.

It was one by the clock in the steeple of the
Nicolaievski Station when we turned into the
Nevsky. The great circle was deserted. Ear-
lier in the day there had been fighting here, but
no trace of it was visible now.

"Put your heads down!" the Cossack ordered,
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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

catching sight of a group of unidentified men
ahead.

We obeyed; but when they proved to be Bol-
shevist soldiers and Red Guardsmen, we peeped
cautiously out again. At the bridge across the
Moika Canal we were turned back by the barri-
cade erected early in the afternoon, and by the
command of the guard, who said there was firing
just ahead and no one could pass. From the
direction of the Winter Palace came the occa-
sional boom! of a big gun, followed by the short,
sharp crack of the rifles.

Reluctantly we retraced our way. In front of
the Kazan Cathedral the guards again ordered
us to halt. In the darkness across the wide
street, we saw a crowd of black figures lined up
in marching order against the curb. We had
come suddenly upon that little band of men and
women who left Smolney to make a demonstra-
tion of passive resistance and die with their
comrades at the Winter Palace. They had been
joined by the Mayor of Petrograd, members of
the City Duma, and the Jewish Bund. There
were four or five hundred of them in all, and

206

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

here, within a few blocks of their destination, they
had been stopped.

In that crowd were many of the men and
women who had been the firebrands of Russia,
the Socialist revolutionists, the terrorists, who
were quietly walking forth to oppose themselves
unarmed to the force of these new revolutionists
who, to their way of thinking, were murdering
the cause of Russian freedom for which most of
them had suffered years of imprisonment and the
unspeakable hardships of exile in Siberia. Here
and there in the crowd was a young officer or a
cluster of students; but more of them were vet-
erans who had grown gray in the service of revo-
lution, and their faces were grim and set.

Standing a few feet away was a squad of sol-
diers. The commissaire in command of them
raised his hand.

"We have orders from the Military Revolu-
tionary Committee to let you go no farther," he
said.

A murmur ran through the crowd. The gray-
haired veterans of the old days began to argue,
and students and officers joined their entreaties.

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The soldiers remained obdurate.

"What will you do if we go anyway?" asked
Mayor Schreider of Petrograd. "Will you
shoot us?"

"No," replied the commissaire. "We have
orders not to shoot you. But we have orders not
to let you pass."

He gave a quick command to his men, who
fell back a distance of fifty feet and lined up
across the Nevsky. They formed a solid human
wall, stretching across the wide street from curb
to curb. A block below there was another and
yet more formidable wall composed of Red
Guardsmen. The demonstrators looked at those
husky young soldiers, and turned away in dis-
may.

"If we go forward," said a gray-haired terror-
ist, once expert in the use of dynamite, "some one
will be killed, and they will blame it on the switch-
man. They will say it was a case of mistaken
orders, and no good will come to any one. We
will go back, and try to persuade them to stop
the slaughter."

In regular marching order they departed as
they had come — a sad and solemn procession,

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he proclamation of the Military Revolutionary Committee announcing the fall of
the Kerensky government, distributed in Petrograd while the guns of the cruiser
Aurora were hammering the Winter Palace

Women soldiers in their last stand before the Winter Palace

The pass which permitted the author safe conduct through the Bolshevist lines

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

helpless in the face of this new, strange thing up-
setting all their preconceived ideas of revolution.

We watched them go; then, anxious to press
on, we presented our passes to the commissaire of
soldiers, who motioned us forward with a
"Pazhal'sta!" The wall broke, and we passed
through without a word. The blue seal of the
Military Revolutionary Committee had done for
us what eloquence and argument could not do
for the old revolutionists.

At the Moika the Red Guard halted us. Our
passes made no appeal here. We looked sus-
piciously like bourgeois on the way to the Winter
Palace, and must not be allowed to pass. We
argued, and they discussed the advisability of
arresting us. The idea did not especially ap-
peal, so we retraced our steps to the Kazan
Cathedral and the friendly commissaire. He de-
tailed a man with special orders to take us through
the lines to the Winter Palace.

Again the factory men with rifles slung over
their shoulders regarded us with suspicion; but
they took the word of the soldier and finally per-
mitted us to pass.

It was quarter of three when we halted in the
209

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

shadow of the great red arch and peered cau-
tiously out into the dark square. There was a
moment of silence ; then three rifle shots shattered
the quiet. We stood speechless, awaiting a re-
turn volley ; but the only sound was the crunching
of broken glass spread like a carpet over the cob-
blestones. The windows of the Winter Palace
had been broken into bits.

Suddenly a sailor emerged from the black.

"It 's all over!" he said. "They have surren-
dered."

We' picked our way across the glass-strewn
square, climbed the barricade erected that after-
noon by the defenders of the Winter Palace, and
followed the conquering sailors and Red Guards-
men into the mammoth building of dingy red
stucco. On the strength of our blue-sealed
passes, they permitted us to enter unquestioned.
A commissaire of sailors motioned us to a bench
beside the wall. A squad of sailors mounted the
stairs to the council chamber, and placed the
Provisional Government under arrest. Above
us we could hear the sound of doors being broken
open, while a searching squad went from room
to room looking for hidden prisoners.

210

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

The rifles taken from the military cadets were
stacked in a heap in the hall, and a solid line of
victorious sailors filed in and out of the palace.
The desire for souvenirs, trophies of the hour,
seemed to have seized them ; but the palace appar-
ently offered little choice. One sailor came down
the stairs with a coat-hanger in his hand, and an-
other carried a sofa cushion. The best a third
could find was a candle. The commissaire
stopped them at the door.

"No, no, tavarisch!" he said, holding out his
hand. "Pazhal'sta, pazhal'sta, you must take
nothing from here."

He talked to them in a patient, reasonable tone,
as one would speak to a child, and like children
they gave up their plunder. One man, a soldier
who had taken a blanket, protested.

"But I am cold," he said.

"I can't help it, tavarisch. If you take that,
they will say we came to loot. And we did not
come for loot: we came for revolution."

At that moment there was a clatter on the
stairs, and I turned to see the members of the
Provisional Government file slowly down. Kon-
ovaloff, rice-president of the Cabinet and Minis-

211

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ter of Trade and Industry, came first. Tretia-
koff of Moscow, president of the Economic Coun-
cil, followed. Behind him was the tall, dark,
slender, handsome figure of the young Foreign
Minister, Tereshchenko, who cast an amazed
glance in my direction as he passed. Next in
line came the little, frail, gray figure of Kishkin,
Minister of Public Welfare, and after him two
military men in uniform, General Manikovsky,
Acting Minister of War, and General Borisoff.
Among the others were practically all the remain-
ing members of the Kerensky Cabinet.

Some of them walked with defiant step and
heads held high. Some were pale, worn, and
anxious. One or two seemed utterly crushed and
broken. The strain of that day of anxious wait-
ing, and that night under the capricious guns of
the cruiser Aurora, coupled with the weeks when
Cabinet crisis had followed Cabinet crisis, had
proved too much for them.

They marched silently off across the square,
and headed for the Fortress of Peter and Paul,
rising grimly out of the darkness beyond the
Neva.

I sat there silently watching them go, and won-

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

dering what this night's work would mean in the
future of Russia and the world. The corn-mis-
scare who had motioned us to the seat indicated
that we might now go upstairs, and we passed
quickly to the council chamber. We made our
way through the shattered rooms, blazing now
with a million lights from the twinkling crystal
chandeliers. The silk curtains hung in shreds,
and here and there on the walls was the ugly
scar of a recent bullet. On the whole, the de-
struction was much less than we had expected
to find it. The attacking force had gone about
its work, determined to take the palace, but to
take it with as little bloodshed as possible, and
in the lulls between storms they had made fre-
quent attempts to break the resistance by frater-
nization. None of the defenders had been killed,
but six of the sailors who had fought in the open
square had paid with their lives for their revolu-
tionary ardor, and many others had been
wounded.

As we passed the door of Kerensky's office,
formerly the study of the last of the Romanoffs,
one of the palace care-takers spoke to the two
soldiers standing guard outside.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"Take good care of this," he said. "The
library is very valuable."

Later, Mr. Gomberg, anxious to test the guard,
presented a pass and asked for admission.

"I am sorry," said one of the soldiers, "but this
pass is not good here. No one can enter this
room to-night."

Nicholas II, who only a few months before had
sat behind the sealed door, was sleeping in exile
on the edge of a Siberiah swamp. Kerensky,
his successor, was spending the night hours in a
desperate effort to reach the front and rally the
troops to prevent the very thing that had just
happened. I recalled, with a little sigh of re-
gret, that this day in this very spot I was to have
lunched with the Minister-President of Russia.

In one of the rooms where we lingered for a
few moments, looking curiously about us, a crowd
of soldiers had gathered, and they were talking
together excitedly. I noticed them, and once I
caught the proletarian word of scorn, "Bour-
geoisie!" But it never occurred to me that we
could be the object of their discussion. Suddenly
a young commissaire came up to us.

"These men can not understand," he said, "who
214

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

you are, and why you are here. They are quite
excited and angry about it. They think perhaps
you may have come to rob. I told them I would
question you, and if you had no right to be here
we would arrest you."

We presented our passes. He examined them,
and turned to the men, who were by this time
quite obviously casting unfriendly glances in our
direction.

"Tavarischi," he said, "these passes are
stamped, just as my own is, with the blue seal.
See it! You may be sure that if they had not
the right they would not be here with this."

The men examined the paper quizzically, and
nodded. They took an informal vote upon the
subject, and it was agreed that we should be al-
lowed to go free.

A few minutes later we followed them down
the stairs and out of the palace, the last people to
leave except for the guards who were detailed
to remain on duty. The next day a decree was
passed making the mammoth red building a peo-
ple's museum, that it might be preserved from
ever again becoming a point of dispute in politi-
cal conflicts.

215

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

I did not see the women soldiers. They were
in another wing of the palace. The following
morning the city rang with stories of their abuse ;
but in the investigation that was made by
Madame Torkova, one of the leaders of the Pet-
rograd Duma, whose inclinations were decidedly
anti-Bolshevik, most of these tales were dis-
proved. Some of the women were taken to the
headquarters of the Pavlovsky Regiment, and
held there until relatives could bring them femi-
nine wearing apparel. A few others, who had no
way to obtain this, were allowed to go in their
soldiers' uniforms.

From a number of the girls I heard the story
of that night. It seems that class feeling had
for the moment wiped out every other instinct.
As they marched them away in the dark, some
of the men, in their excitement, took them by the
arms and shook them, shouting:

"Why do you fight us? Why do you go
against your own class? You are working-
women. Why do you fight with the bourgeoisie
and the counter-revolutionists?"

So effective was their propaganda that then,
for the first time, a class breach was made in the

216

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

ranks of the women soldiers, and some of them
went over to the radicals as completely as any of
the men had done.

With the surrender of the Winter Palace, the
victory of the Bolsheviki was complete. The
dictatorship of the proletariat had become a fact.
The only power in Petrograd at dawn that morn-
ing was the power of the People's Commissaries,
headed by Nicolai Lenin and Leon Trotzky, and
backed by the Russian fleet, the bayonets of the
Petrograd garrison, and the Red Guard rifles.

Petrograd was stunned. No one had the re-
motest idea what was going to happen. "Where
is Kerensky ?" they asked. "Where is Korniloff ?
Where is Savinkoff? Where are the Cossacks?"
Last, and worst of all, "Where are the Ger-
mans?"

Rumor was riding a mad steed. All sorts of
wild reports swept through the city, but no word
of verified fact came from the outside world.
That morning the storm center shifted to the city
Duma, which refused to acknowledge the victory
of the Bolsheviki or accede to their demands. A
Committee for the Salvation of the Country
and the Revolution was quickly formed, and all

211

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the anti-Bolshevik groups gathered around it.

Early in the day, a Bolshevist representative
called at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and de-
manded the secret treaties, declaring that he
wished to inform the Russian people as to the
aims of the war. He was told that ten thousand
dossiers were to be found in the archives of the
ministry, and he was at liberty to examine all of
them. He thanked his informant and left.

At the same hour Lenin called at the office of
the Izvestia., official organ of the executive com-
mittee of the. Council of Workmen and Soldiers,
and announced that it would hereafter be in the
hands of the Bolsheviki. He proposed to the
editors to continue work under the new leader-
ship. They refused, and Zenovieff, who only a
few hours before had been a fugitive, was elevated
to the position of chief.

Absolute quiet reigned in the city that day
and the next, and such order as Russia had not
known since the days immediately following the
March Revolution, when the entire populace was
lifted into a state of exaltation in which selfish
desires played no part. Every soldier had been
told that the honor of the new Revolution was in

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

his hands. Every member of the Red Guard had
been warned that provocation in all the time-
tried Russian forms would be used by monarch-
ists, counter-revolutionists, and German agents
to discredit the cause of the workers. They were
admonished to refrain from violence themselves,
and to prevent looting wherever the slightest in-
dication of it was found. Placards were posted
upon the buildings urging precautions against
disorder, and soldiers were on patrol duty at
every street corner.

By Friday night the Committee of Salvation
had succeeded in spreading the strikes in the vari-
ous ministries until the Bolsheviki were almost
completely isolated from the rest of the Russian
intelligentzia. They made the city ring with
stories of outrages — stories that later proved to
be a fine fabric of falsification, worthy of Russian
imagination. The leaders of the Council of the
Republic, the Peasants' Council, and even the
Centroflot, Executive Committee of the Russian
fleet, called upon the people to refuse to recog-
nize the Soviet government, and announced that
before long they would be able to establish a
stable government themselves.

219

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

It was a call the people did not heed. The
masses had swung away from their leaders.
They had their own very definite ideas as to
what they wanted. The sailors were protesting
violently that the Centrabalt did not represent
the rank and file of the navy, and it was finally
dissolved by order of the Military Revolutionary
Committee. Soldiers from the ranks were
charging their committees with counter-revolu-
tion, and shouting with fire in their eyes that
their executives were putting off the army elec-
tions week after week because they knew they
no longer had the faith of the men in the trenches
and could not be reelected. The same split had
come between the peasants and their executives,
and every rumor from the remote corners of
Russia indicated that little villages, towns, and
cities were following the lead of Petrograd, and
rising in massed revolt.

The Bolsheviki had achieved a degree of suc-
cess greater than they suspected. The leaders,
exhausted by lack of sleep, depressed by the re-
jection of the Intelligentzia, and conscious of their
inadequacy for the mere physical task of bringing

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

bread to keep Petrograd alive, failed utterly to
realize their strength. A heavy pall of discour-
agement settled on Smolney.

Word had come that the Cossacks were march-
ing on the city, and that the citadel of the work-
ers would be attacked the following morning.
Petrograd poured out to fight. The factory
gates opened wide, and that amazing army of the
Red Guard, ununiformed, untrained, and cer-
tainly unequipped for battle with the traditional
backbone of the Russian military, marched away
to defend the "revolutionary capital" and the
victory of the proletariat.

Women walked by the side of men, and small
boys tagged along on the fringes of the proces-
sion. Some of the factory girls wore red crosses
upon the sleeves of their thin jackets, and packed
a meager kit-bag of bandages and first-aid ac-
cessories. More of them carried shovels with
which to dig trenches. The fire of the Crusaders
was in their eyes, and the faith of the Christian
martyrs in their souls, as they marched down the
Nevsky, singing as they went, oblivious to the
bitter cold that blew in from the Baltic waters,

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

and unafraid for the first time of that foe whose
very name had been a terror to countless genera-
tions of beaten, broken human beings.

At ten o'clock Friday night my telephone rang,
and a weary voice came over the wire. It was my
Lettish friend, Jacob Peters.

"I am trying to translate something," he said.
"It is very important, and I do not know enough
English. Could you find time to help me?"

"When?" I asked him.

"Now," he said.

Half an hour later he knocked at my door.
His face was gray with fatigue. He had not
been in bed for three days, and he looked utterly
crushed and discouraged.

"It is the decree of peace to the warring na-
tions of the world," he said. "We are going to
send it out on the wireless in every language.
They have given me the English translation.
We have nobody to help us. It is terrible-
there are so few of us who can do this sort of
thing."

We sat down at my typewriter, and Peters
struggled with the difficult Russian words.
Though he could speak Russian, his knowledge of

222

FALL OF THE WINTER PALACE

the fine points of the language was none too good.
He had to translate it first in his own mind into
Lettish, and then into English, and his poor,
tired brain nearly went mad with the task.

Slowly I took down the words. At the end of
an hour the sum of our labors covered half a page
of typewriting. We started glibly enough with
the title:

THE DECREE OF PEACE

and continued:

The Ail-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workmen's,
Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies unanimously passed
the following decree of peace, October 26-November 8.

The Workmen's and Peasants' Government, made by
the Revolution of the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of
October (old style), and sanctioned by the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peas-
ants' Deputies, asks the warring peoples and govern-
ments to start negotiations immediately for rightful
and democratic peace ; for rightful and democratic
peace for which the majority of the worn-out, suffer-
ing, and war-weary workers are longing in all warring
countries ; peace for which the peasants and workers of
Russia have been persistently asking since they over-
threw the monarchy of the Tsar, that is, peace without
annexations and contributions and self-definition of
nations.

It was only the first paragraph. Peters looked
£88

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

despairingly at the long document in front of
him, and rubbed his tired eyes.

"I guess it 's no use," he said. "We could n't
finish it if we worked all night. My Russian is
not good enough. If we only had some trans-
lators! If we only had some stenographers!"

Here was this new government of the People's
Commissaries preparing a document that they
confidently hoped would revolutionize the status
of the struggling world, and there was no one to
translate it but a Lett who had not been to bed
for three days, and an American war corre-
spondent.

When Peters got up to leave, he held out his
hand.

"This may be the last time I will see you," he
said. "If we fail now, everything is lost. Up
in my country the business is all in my name — my
throat will be the first one cut."

"Well, we have tried, anyway, and if we fail
I know the day will come when the world will
say that dark Russia did her best to bring peace
to all the war-weary peoples!"

CHAPTER XII

THE DAY OF SHAME

SUNDAY, November 11, must go down on the
calendar of the red Russian year as a day of
shame. On that day there was a sacrifice of the
innocents as needless as it was useless, and those
responsible were not the military school cadets,
nor the soldiers and workmen whom they fought,
but a little group of older men who stayed safely
beyond the reach of guns and sent mere boys to
do their fighting for them.

That the toll of victims was not much greater
was due to an American, whose part may still be
remembered in Petrograd when the fallen city is
risen again.

Shortly before noon Sunday, I was sitting in
my room in the War Hotel, wondering at the
quiet, broken only by the ringing of the church
bells, when two shots abruptly shattered the
silence. They were followed by the noise of ex-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

cited voices, and the clatter of many feet in the
halls.

I hurried out to the stairs, but an officer turned
me back at the first landing.

"They are fighting downstairs — you had better
keep to your room," he said.

I retraced my steps, and on the floor above
caught the elevator and dropped swiftly down.
The lobby was swarming. Soldiers were run-
ning about everywhere, men and officers were
shouting, and nobody could tell what was hap-
pening. I walked to the door in time to see an
armored car turn the corner and make for the
hotel. Several other people saw it at the same
moment, and there was a rush for the stairs. The
car came to a halt at the entrance.

Suddenly a boy officer, a cigarette hanging
nonchalantly from the corner of his mouth and
a revolver in his hand, lined the Bolshevik guards
up against the wall and disarmed them. He had
come with the pass-word of the Military Revo-
lutionary Committee, and the paper he carried in
his pocket was stamped with the blue seal. It
did not occur to any one at that moment that
either the pass-word or the seal could have been

THE DAY OF SHAME

stolen. The soldiers obeyed every command of
the Military Revolutionary Committee without
question. Not until they were prisoners and had
heard the lock on the basement door turn behind
them did they realize that they had been tricked.

"Who are they?" everybody asked. "Has
Kerensky come? Is Korniloff here?"

I put the question to a Russian admiral stand-
ing near me. He shook his head in despair.
"God knows, madame. I don't."

The boy officer and his squad departed as sud-
denly as they had come, carrying most of the
rifles with them. Quiet settled on the hotel.
The old guard was in prison, and there was no
new one. Two small boys picked up a couple of
rifles left behind, and slung them across their
shoulders in imitation of the armed workmen.

"Krasnia Gvardia!" (Red Guard!), one said,
hunching down into his coat. A woman laughed
hysterically.

I left the hotel, and followed the officer down
the Morskaya to the telephone building two
blocks below. Motor-trucks and a couple of
touring cars had been placed across the street as
a barricade to traffic; and the crowd, warned

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

back by uniformed men with rifles in their hands,
kept at a safe distance.

Albert Williams was standing in the doorway,
talking to a group of soldiers. They were very
evidently not Bolsheviki, and I crossed the street
to find out what had happened there. He drew
me quickly into the shelter of the courtyard and
began to explain. The telephone exchange was
once more in the hands of the military school
cadets, and they were momentarily expecting a
counter-attack by the Red Guard and the sailors.
A tall, dark-eyed boy, one of the ten who had
stood guard over the Provisional Government in
the Winter Palace, related in perfect English
the events of the morning.

At daybreak an automobile drove up to the
door, and two officers stepped out. They said
that Kerensky was on his way to Petrograd and
would arrive in a short time with two regiments.
They provided the boys with the seal of the Mili-
tary Revolutionary Committee and the proper
pass-words, told them to go to the first cluster
of guards gathered around one of the street-cor-
ner fires, surprise them, overpower them by num-
bers, and take their guns away. Their orders

THE DAY OF SHAME

then were to take the telephone exchange and the
War Hotel by means of the pass-word, and hold
them until Kerensky arrived.

The boys started blithely forth, convinced that
they were preparing the way for the restoration
of the Provisional Government and it was merely
a matter of an hour or two before the victorious
troops of Kerensky would come to relieve them.

"I don't see why he does not come," he ended
plaintively. "We can't hold out long alone."

At this time there was only an occasional volley,
but at two o'clock the firing began in earnest from
both ends of the street. The cadets, mere chil-
dren in this business of war, built barricades of
boxes and boards across the sidewalks, and when
the supply of these was exhausted they carried
logs from a wood-pile. They took up positions
behind these frail protections and fired at the
attacking forces, which came at them from two
directions. Some hid behind the motor-trucks,
resting their guns upon the engines. Some lay
flat in the mud upon the wooden cobbles, and fired
from underneath the cars.

I watched the fight, first from behind the barri-
cade in the courtyard, then went upstairs to a

229

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

front window where I could look down upon the
street.

In a room on the second floor, Antonoff, head
of the Red Guard and member of the Bolshevik
War Commissary, was a prisoner.

The crowd outside the building, led by a fac-
tory worker and reinforced by sailors, learned
that Antonoff was in the building, and were mad
to be at the throats of the men who were holding
their leader. They had still another grievance
against the cadets. Many of these same boys
had been captured once in the Winter Palace,
and allowed to go free. They had broken their
parole, and the sailors especially were bitter to
think they had to sacrifice more of their comrades
to re-arrest them.

In the middle of the afternoon the cadets sug-
gested a peace parley, offering to surrender
Antonoff if they were allowed to go free.

"We '11 take Antonoff ourselves, and kill every
last one of you," came back the answer.

The boys grew desperate.

"Why doesn't Kerensky come? Why
doesn't Kerensky come?" they asked again and
again.

330

THE DAY OF SHAME

There was no one to answer. The older offi-
cers, who had been directing them, completely
disappeared. The stock of ammunition dimin-
ished. A Red Cross automobile dashed up to
the building at half -past two, left a box of hand-
grenades, and departed again.

A machine-gun had been set up on a wooden
box in the street, and in the courtyard a woman
with a shawl over her head loaded and reloaded
the tape. The attacking forces were pressing
closer and closer upon the building. The street
barricades were abandoned. A few of the cadets
poured up the stairs and into the front rooms.
At four o'clock I was moved from my place at
the window.

"We want to shoot from here," one of the
cadets explained.

With that they smashed the glass with the
butts of their rifles, and took their places behind
the yellow silk curtains. I walked across to a
window overlooking the court. Two cadets
passed into the building bearing a wounded
comrade, who lay limp in the arms of his bear-
ers.

"Come away from here. They 're down in the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

courtyard at the foot of the stairs!" somebody
shouted.

With that the hall was deserted. Men and
girls fled to the back of the building. In a pantry
I found a boy officer with a huge breadknife,
trying to cut the buttons from his coat with hands
that trembled so they made a long job of it.
Still another was tearing frantically at his epau-
lets. In an ante-room behind the switchboard
three more discovered the street clothes of some
mechanics, and were quickly stripping them-
selves.

Suddenly the thing for which these boys had
striven — the coveted gold braid and brass but-
tons of an officer's uniform, symbol of their
superiority — had become their curse. Any one
of them would have given the last thing he pos-
sessed on earth for the suit of a common working-
man. Stripped bare of every scrap of 'the pride
and tradition of their class, they were caught in
the grip of a fear that drained every drop of
blood from their faces and every bit of courage
from their hearts.

Wandering about from room to room, stopping
here and there to say "Kharasho!" or "Nichevo!"

THE DAY OF SHAME

to some poor girl dissolved in tears upon a bench,
I came out finally in a corridor where Mr. Wil-
liams was standing with his interpreter. A cadet
officer had hold of the lapels of his overcoat, and
was pleading with him to take it off and let him
escape. The boy's bronze face was gray with
fear, and his words tumbled over each other in
jumbled incoherence. I glanced from him to
the American, and saw a pair of eyes full of pain
and indecision. A tense, silent moment followed
— a moment in which I held my breath and
waited.

The shooting outside had stopped. Dark was
closing in around us. Everything for me was
obliterated but the one man asking for something
that might save his life, and the other to whom it
was second nature to give, torn between con-
viction and desire. I knew the tumult in his
soul.

The coat of rough brown cloth and American
cut was strikingly different from any other in
Russia, and it had become a familiar garment in
revolutionary Petrograd. Its owner was an ex-
cellent speaker, and he had talked to the men at
the front, on the fleet, and in the factories, and

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

wrapped in the brown coat he had slept in peas-
ant huts from Moscow to Kieff .

The Russian workmen loved him and trusted
him, and he had come to know them and to believe
in the integrity of their idealism. He had pity
for these frightened fellows, but he was almost
as bitter as a Red Guardsman at the breaking of
parole, the stealing of passes, and the illegitimate
use of the Red Cross car.

"If I give him my coat they will recognize it
and think me a traitor," he said.

I did not answer. I felt I had no right to
plead with him against his principles. His Rus-
sian had completely deserted him. He turned to
his interpreter:

"Tell him I can't give him my coat, but per-
haps I can help in some other way," he said.

The interpreter obeyed, and the officer walked
away with a hopeless, despairing shake of the
head.

We stood for a moment looking after him,
both of us possessed of a frantic consciousness
that something must be done to save these boys
doing the bidding of the men who had left them
in a trap.

234

THE DAY OF SHAME

"Oh, if I could only speak this language!" I
said, in a futile explosion of protest against my
helplessness.

"What would you do?" my companion asked.

"I don't know what I 'd do, but I 'd do some-
thing!" I answered, and started down the hall,
deserted a few minutes earlier. Mr. Williams
followed me.

"Find him," he said. "I can't give him my
coat, but I will leave it here, and he can come and
take it."

I hurried past the stairway, with one swift
glance toward the dark courtyard, where men
from the street were crowding thicker and
thicker. I went from corridor to corridor, jos-
tling groups of frightened men and women,
and stumbled at last into a back room, where
most of the cadets had gathered. They had
thrown down their guns and were waiting for the
end. I searched the faces. The officer was not
among them.

Mr. Williams, by this time possessed of a pas-
sion to find him, had been hunting in another part
of the building. At the moment, for both of us,
the whole tragic situation was done up in the

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

plight of this one feeble human being trying to
save his life. Every second we expected to hear
the rush of men on the stairway.

"Perhaps I can do something with Antonoff,"
Mr. Williams suggested. "Where are the
boys?"

I led him back to the room where I had found
them, and he offered to go to the imprisoned
Minister of War and try to make terms of sur-
render that would guarantee their safety.

"Pazhal'sta, barin! Please help us! Please
save us !" they cried in chorus.

With two cadets to guide him and unlock the
door, he disappeared. We waited a breathless
two minutes. When he returned, a queer, emaci-
ated little fellow, stoop -shouldered and pale,
walked beside him. A very long nose and a
fringe of long pale hair were almost all of him
visible below the wide brim of his soft felt hat.
Surely the War Minister had none of the tradi-
tional appearance of a'Russian military man.

"Tavarisch Antonoff, save our lives!" cried the
cadets in unison. "On the word of the good revo-
lutionist that we know you are, save our lives!"

"Where are your officers?" Antonoff asked.
236

THE DAY OF SHAME

"They have all left us," they answered.

The terms of surrender were quickly made, and
Antonoff and Williams started downstairs to face
the crowd. The men of the Red Guard recog-
nized their leader.

"Antonoff! Antonoff!" they shouted. "Nash,
nash!" (Ours, ours!) "Where are the junk-
ers?"

With this the men in the lead made for the
stairs. Antonoff stopped them.

"I have given my word of honor as a revolu-
tionist that these men in there shall not be killed,
and as revolutionists you must keep that word."

Some of the Baltic fleet sailors, who had come
down from the Respublica, recognized the Amer-
ican.

"Americanski tavarisch !" one of them shouted.

Mr. Williams began speaking to them.

"I know the temptation you have," he said,
"but the ideals of your Revolution will be sullied
if you yield to it. If you insist on fighting till
you kill the last junker, it will be a useless mas-
sacre, and I will make it known around the
world."

He explained the case of the boys and their
237

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

desertion by their officers, and when he finished a
vote was taken. All the sailors lifted their hands.
A few of the Red Guard murmured dissent.

Antonoff turned to them.

"I have made my terms of surrender," he said,
"and I will myself shoot the first man who harms
one of the junkers."

There was a ring of finality in his tone. The
men looked at him in astonishment.

"Shoot us?" they cried incredulously.

"Yes," he answered. "I would rather that we
should all die than that this American should
say that revolutionists of Russia were base and
revengeful 1"

This time all the hands went up.

A committee from the city Duma arrived at
that moment, and as the cadets filed down the
stairs, the leader took the hand of the first one
and placed it in the hand of a sailor.

"This is prisoner number one, and I trust his
life into your hands. Guard it for the honor of
the Revolution," he said.

When the last man was delivered, the sailor
who brought him downstairs tossed a contemptu-
ous glance in his direction and said: "The last

238

THE DAY OF SHAME

of the trash!" He was quickly hushed by one of
his companions.

Outside in the Morskaya an occasional shot
sounded above the shuffle of feet in the court-
yard.

"Provokator! Provokator!" the sailors cried,
and cautioned each other against being aroused
to response.

Meanwhile the frightened telephone operators
slipped quietly away in the dark. None of the
terrors they had feared in the long hours of the
afternoon had materialized. They all went on
strike, and the next time I called at the exchange
the switchboards were manned by sailors, soldiers,
and a few factory workers, whose poor bewildered
brains and clumsy fingers struggled desperately
to master the intricate science of plugging in and
plugging out.

The telephone exchange and the War Hotel
were not the only spots where trouble raged that
Sunday. At the Vladimirsky Military School,
Bolshevik forces and cadets fought a desperate
battle, and many were killed. Some of the cadets
were reported to be frightfully mutilated by bay-
onet thrusts. On the Gogol, not far from St.

239

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Isaac's Cathedral, there were a few hideous mo-
ments of slaughter. An armored car came down
the street. Inside were three cadets and a chauf-
feur. The people in the street hurried into a
doorway for shelter. In the group were civilian
men, women, and children, and six sailors. The
car came to an abrupt stop just opposite the door-
way, and the guns, opening fire, sprayed death
into that cluster of humans.

A workman was the first to fall, and a little
newsboy crumpled on the pavement beside him.
The sailors darted toward the car, and jabbed
their bayonets through the holes in the steel
plates. The shrieks of the men inside told
plainly that the weapons had struck home. The
firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun. When
the shrieks suddenly died away, they dragged
three dead men out and stretched them on the
cobbles. They were covered with blood and
bayonet wounds until they were unrecognizable.
The chauffeur, who was uninjured, begged for
mercy, and a Bolshevik in the crowd said :

"For God's sake, let him go. Let 's not kill
any more of them than we have to !"

It was midnight when I again returned to the
240

The Winter Palace from the Red Arch

Russian soldiers at home in the Palace of a Grand Duke

Soldiers and factory workers took the place of striking telephone operators

Red Guards on duty before Trotzky's door

THE DAY OF SHAME

hotel, which had in the meantime been recap-
tured by the Bolsheviki. This time they were
taking no chances. The lobby and the upper
floors swarmed with sailors. There were hun-
dreds of guards where the day before there had
been twenty. They had commandeered the en-
tire second floor, and with machine-guns had
taken positions in the front windows. The
servants had fled. The beds were unmade.
There had been no food in the hotel all day.
Most of the residents had departed.

Nearly a week had passed since the beginning
of the Bolshevik Revolution, and we were still
in utter darkness as to what was going on in the
rest of the world. The last news from the out-
side was the joyous word that woman suffrage
had carried New York State by 100,000 majority.
It seemed incredible, as wild as the wild rumors
that were pouring in from Siberia and the Cau-
casus; we did not dare believe it. Kerensky's
movements just outside the city continued to re-
main shrouded in mystery.

I found my desk covered with messages from
kindly members of the American colony, bent on
rescuing me from the storm-center of Revolution.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

I read them over with a sense of pleasure — that
pleasure which always comes with the knowledge
that warm, friendly human guardian angels are
standing in the offing; but I had not the slightest
intention in the world of obeying any of the well-
meant advice or accepting any of the gracious
hospitality. Here under this very roof was the
theater in which the tremendous revolutionary
drama, involving the destiny of nearly two hun-
dred million Russians and no one could say how
many others of the peoples of the world, was be-
ing played. It was for this I had come to Rus-
sia. By the side of it personal security seemed
a trivial thing.

I put the notes away and went downstairs to
talk with some of the sailors. Their conversa-
tion that night was chiefly of provocation.
Again and again I heard the words, "Provokator !
Provokator!" My Western mind had come re-
luctantly to the admission that provocation and
Black Hundred plots were an actuality and not
a nightmare of some dark age-long dead. I lis-
tened with interest to their charges against the
monarchists, and wondered how much truth there
might be in them.

THE DAY OF SHAME

Coming down in the elevator next morning, I
met Baron B. I had not seen him for several
days, and frequently I had wondered what he
was doing in the new crisis. I looked up at him
as he entered the lift, and there was something
in his face that made me shudder inside.

"Where were you yesterday?" I asked, with as
much self-control as I could muster. "We did
not see you around, and we thought perhaps you
had been arrested."

He laughed — a mirthless, cruel laugh that was
more nearly a sneer.

"No," he said; "they won't arrest me. I was
out with a rifle over my shoulder. I was one of
them. I was a Red Guard!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

MYSTERY shrouded the Petrograd front. In
the days that followed the battles of Gatchina
and Tsarskoe Selo only a few meager facts came
out of the background of wildly conflicting ru-
mors.

We knew that Kerensky, with that dazzling
gift of his for momentarily overpowering men,
had driven in an automobile into the midst of a
detachment of rebel soldiers, and disarmed them.

We knew that the ragtag army of the Red
Guard, fired by faith in their cause, had taught
the Cossacks that it takes more than a military
reputation to make a fighting man.

We knew that the sailor Dydenko had gone
alone across No Man's Land to plead the cause
of the proletarian revolt, and had come back with
the surrender of the opposing forces.

We knew that it was all over.

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

At heart the Cossacks were no more eager for
killing their brothers than the rest of the Rus-
sians. They were the policemen of the Tsar be-
cause they had known no other calling, seen no
other vision. The Revolution had broken their
traditions, given them a new faith. They were
no longer a unit ready to do the bidding of a mas-
ter. Many of the younger Cossacks had already
embraced the Bolshevist faith, and in the months
to follow more and more of them were to desert
the ways of their fathers.

There is something poignantly tragic in the
picture of Kerensky out there alone beyond the
edge of the city, where for an hour he was an
uncrowned king. Like most of the Russian lead-
ers of the revolutionary year, he came out of
nowhere, flashed for a moment on the world's
screen, and disappeared into nowhere again. If
some day he should emerge from that land of
silence into which so many Russians are exiled
by the changing fortunes of revolution, we may
learn what really happened to him at Gatchina.
The sailor Dybenko, in his report to the Soviet,
declared that Kerensky, when he learned the sol-
diers had deserted him, said to General Krasnoff :

245

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"Your Cossacks have betrayed me. I shall
drive a bullet into my brain."

According to Dybenko's story, General Kras-
noff suggested that the only courageous thing for
the Minister-President of Russia to do was to
go to Petrograd, and offered to give him an es-
cort of eight men. To this Kerensky consented,
but, while the escort was being formed, he asked
to be allowed to clean himself up, and succeeded
in changing to the uniform of a sailor and escap-
ing in an izvostchik.

Leon Trotzky, in a telegram from the village
of Pulkovo to his followers in Petrograd, said:

"On the evening of November 12 Kerensky
sent a proclamation to the revolutionary troops to
lay down their arms. The Kerensky troops had
opened artillery fire. Our artillery replied and
silenced the enemy. The Cossacks started an of-
fensive attack but the withering fire of the sailors,
Red Guards, and soldiers compelled them to turn
back. We have cut into the ranks of the enemy
— the enemy is running. Our troops are pursu-
ing. Lettish sharpshooters are arriving from the
front and approaching Kerensky's rear. An or-
der for his arrest has been issued."

246

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

Kerensky's associates in Petrograd tried to
keep in touch with him to the last minute, but
the scraps of information they received were unil-
luminating, for he himself could not tell how long
he would be able to hold his men. Their distaste
for killing each other was far greater than their
loyalty to any individual or institution.

Meanwhile the city shuddered at the tales of
frightfulness centered around the ancient For-
tress of Peter and Paul, where the ministers of
the Kerensky Cabinet and the military school
cadets were imprisoned. Mothers, driven nearly
mad by the stories of starvation, cruelties, and
atrocities, appealed frantically to the city Duma
and the American Red Cross Mission to investi-
gate these reports.

At the request of the Duma and the American
Mission, I became one of a committee of four
to visit the prison and interview the inmates.
Two of us— Daddy R. and M. Mikhailoff, of the
London Telegraph — were Russians.

We walked in awed silence through the arched
gate in the massive outer wall, each busy with his
own thoughts. To the two Russians this was a
day never to be forgotten. Both of them had

£47

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

been old revolutionists, and Mikhailoff had been
a prisoner in this very fortress not many years
before. For me the place was full of ghosts.
They walked before me in a strange procession.
I watched while Peter, who stalks the city by day
and by night, killed his own son. I saw Cather-
ine bury alive the critics who found her marital
practices not to their liking. I saw the Decem-
brists— they who first fought to free the serfs-
martyred before my eyes. Last of all, I saw the
fortress gate swing wide on that glad March day
when the revolutionists took possession of Petro-
grad, and men and women, with blinking eyes
and tears of joy streaming down their faces,
marched into the free world.

Mikhailoff brought me back to the moment.

"Listen! The bells — it 's the Gospodi pomilui
[Lord save me]," he said. "It was the chimes
that almost drove us mad. The monotony of
them — the terrible regularity!"

We stood still till the sound died away, then
passed indoors to a crowded waiting-room. The
place was dirty, and the air foul. The floor was
littered with cigarette stubs, and heaped on a

248

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

table in one corner was a strangely assorted pile
of paper bundles of food, brought by relatives
for the prisoners.

Through a door at one side of the room un-
shaven soldiers, in mud-colored uniforms, passed
ceaselessly in and out. Most of the occupants
were women, poor women with platoks tied over
their heads, and prosperous, well dressed women
with diamonds in their ears. Some sat deject-
edly against the wall, waiting. Some, in high-
pitched, nervous voices, demanded to see their
sons and brothers immediately. The guards re-
plied wearily but patiently.

Daddy R. was for quietly sitting down with
the waiting ones, in Russian fashion. We
prodded him into action, and made our way past
two sentries to an inner office. At the desk sat
a soldier commissaire. His eyes were heavy
with sleep and his young face gray with fatigue.
In a corner of the office two exhausted comrades
lay asleep on the floor. By sheer effort of will,
the commissaire kept on answering questions fired
at him from a dozen tongues. In time our turn
came. He read our passes, glanced at the seals,

£49

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

gave a hurried order to a guard, and bowed us
out.

We passed through a succession of dingy of-
fices, up a dark stairway, and down a long cor-
ridor.

"It's the Troubetskoy bastion," Mikhailoff
whispered in an awed undertone.

Our guide motioned us to wait. At the other
end of the hall some sailors and soldiers were
talking. One of them looked up, saw me, and,
detaching himself from his comrades, brought a
chair, which he offered with a pleasant "Pazh-
al'sta."

A few minutes later the commandant of the
bastion appeared, a bunch of keys jangling in his
hand. He wore the uniform of an officer, and
spoke a little English. Like the others, he was
pale and haggard, and later in the day he con-
fided to me that he could not live through another
five days like those just past.

"Up to the time of the last Revolution," he
said, "there were only three or four members of
the old regime in the entire prison. We were not
prepared with food or fuel to take care of many
more. Suddenly, in a single day, we had to find

250

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

quarters and provisions for nearly three hundred.
Then, there were the mobs. I have not felt se-
cure for a single second."

He took us first to a tier of cells in which the
military school cadets were imprisoned. At the
door of the first cell he asked if we preferred to
talk to the boys alone.

"They might feel freer," I said, and he nodded
and withdrew.

They all told virtually the same story. They
had been terribly frightened on their way to the
prison, for the crowds had tried to take them
from the convoy.

"They have killed our comrades!" the mobs
shouted. "They are trying to destroy our Revo-
lution. It is time to stop their cake-eating.
Throw them in the river! Put a bullet through
them!"

Once a group of them were lined up against a
wall; but the convoy fought off the crowd. In
the first twenty- four hours ia prison, things had
been bad because the cells were damp and cold
and there was no food ; but the boys explained the
conditions as the commandant had done, and
blamed no one.

251

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

In another part of the bastion we found the
members of the Kerensky Cabinet. Teresh-
chenko, the late Foreign Minister, sat cross-
legged on his cot, a cigarette in his mouth. He
greeted us pleasantly, and in the softest, most
musical English I ever heard inquired for news of
the French front and of Moscow.

The cell was as large as an ordinary American
bedroom, and was equipped with modern sani-
tary conveniences and provided with an iron cot
and table. He said he had everything he wanted,
and believed his release merely a matter of a few
days. If he could have foreseen the long months
of imprisonment, I doubt whether he would have
presented such a cheerful front that afternoon.
Just before I left Petrograd I heard of him again.
The dark-haired, debonair boy statesman had dis-
appeared. His shoulders had begun to droop,
and a gray beard hung from his chin. The Min-
ister of Rumania, during the day that he spent in
the Fortress of Peter and Paul, met him in the
exercise-yard.

"I see you now," Tereshchenko said to the Ru-
manian, "but I shall not see you again. My
shame that my country has imprisoned the diplo-

252

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

matic representative of another country is too

great."

In similar cells we found Kishkin, Bourtzeff,
Rutenberg, Paltchinsky, and other men arrested
after the fall of the Winter Palace. The top of
Rutenberg' s head had been grazed by a bullet on
the night of his arrest. The ministers were
marched from the Winter Palace to the fortress.
The prison guard, discovering a crowd in the
darkness, thought it was a mob attacking the
fortress, and opened machine-gun fire to frighten
them away. Ministers and convoy alike fol-
lowed the Russian custom in such cases, and fell
flat on their faces in the middle of the street.
Rutenberg was a little slower than the others.

He was rebellious against imprisonment, and
complained of the quality of the food.

"We live hourly in fear of our lives," he said.

It was true — they did. It was quite plain that
their position was a precarious one, because they
were in a sense hostages, and any violence done to
the Bolshevik leaders would very quickly have
met with retaliation from the Bolshevik follow-
ers in the prison garrison. The stories of out-
rages circulated so freely outside the prison were

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

more of a menace to the men inside than anything
else could have been, because they helped to keep
alive the bitterness and hatred that made their
position so critical.

Vladimir Bourtzeff and Daddy R. were old
friends, and when the guard unlocked the door
of Bourtzeff s cell, they threw themselves into
each other's arms and kissed on both cheeks.
Bourtzeff, who uncovered the ring of spies and
provokators headed by the infamous Azeff , had
many times suffered imprisonment and exile at
the hands of the Tsar. Now, with the turn of
Revolution, he was proclaimed a reactionary.
His paper was suppressed by Kerensky, and
General Verkhovsky, the young Minister of
War, sued him for libel. With the overturn of
the government, he made a bitter attack upon the
Bolsheviki, accusing Lenin of being a German
agent and a traitor to Russia.

From the cells occupied by the Kerensky min-
isters we went to those in which the prisoners of
the old regime had spent the revolutionary year,
ignorant of the seething life beyond their prison
walls. As we entered the cell of Soukhomlinoff,
Minister of War under the Tsar, the two Rus-

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

sian members of the party led the way. Souk-
homlinoff arose and stepped forward to meet us.
As if with a single impulse, the two revolution-
ists put their hands behind their backs and bowed
low before him. They were ancient enemies —
they could not shake hands.

Soukhomlinoff started, recovered himself, and
bowed low in return. He turned to me, inviting
me to a seat on his cot, and apologized that he
had nothing better to offer. He wore a comfort-
able lounging robe, and there was a certain air of
ancient elegance about him, despite his position
and his prison cell. His hair — what there was
of it — was quite white, and there were pouches
under his faded old blue eyes, and deep lines in
his face. The table beside him was as shipshape
as a sailor's kit-box. He picked up a portfolio
and opened it. His old hand shook as he untied
the string and revealed a pile of foolscap closely
written in a small, fine hand.

"It is here," he said — "my case. It is all here.
I have written this to prove that I am innocent."

He fingered the paper tenderly. It was the
work of many dreary hours. We let him talk
about it for a few minutes, then asked how he

255

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

fared there in prison under the Bolshevist regime.

"I have no complaint," he said. "Perhaps it
is better than before, because they give us the
newspapers. That means much to a man in
prison. To-day I am very happy because my
wife has just been to see me. She is very good to
me, and comes as often as they will permit her.
Those are great days — the days of her visits."

It was for this wife, young and considered a
very beautiful woman according to the Russian
standard, that Soukhomlinoff is supposed to
have sold his country in those days when the
Russian troops fell like dead leaves in an Oc-
tober wind because they had nothing but naked
hands with which to meet the mighty cannon of
the advancing Germans.

Our last visit that day was to the arch villain of
the old regime, Biletsky, chief of the Tsar's secret
police. Biletsky has many sins written large
against his name. Few men within the length
and breadth of all the Russias have been responsi-
ble for more broken hopes, more crushed lives,
more human wrecks, than the master detective.
He was a big fellow with iron-gray hair and
beard, and a pair of sharp brown eyes, quick-

256

(£) Orrin S. Wightman

"Old Ivan Veliki high up in the heavens faithfully thundered the hours above the
citadel of church and state"

THE GRAVE OF HOPE

shifting and penetrating. He was able, shrewd,
and as hard as his reputation implied.

He was glad to talk — grateful, I think, for a
chance. He welcomed the Bolshevik regime.
Possibly it was because he believed, with most of
the men of the old order, that the quickest way
to restore the monarchy was to give the radicals
a loose line and help them to create all the dis-
order possible. Perhaps it was because he
thought new names on the prison roster, new
hates in the revolutionary heart, would detract
attention from the old. Perhaps it was only be-
cause he believed any change might hold the pos-
sibility of greater leniency for himself. Per-
haps it was, as he said, because the Bolsheviki
had given him newspapers and put him once more
in touch with the world from which he had been
so long isolated.

It was quite dark when we left the prison. As
I passed one of the cells in which the cadets were
being held, I peered through the peep-hole in the
door, and saw a group of boys with a pack of
cards spread out on the mattress before them.
The city was saving electric light, and the cur-
rent had not yet been turned on for the night.

257

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

A stub of candle lit up their faces, and revealed
them intent upon their game. If they were in
danger they had forgotten it.

We came away, agreed upon one thing: what-
ever might come of chaos and disorder in this new
regime, the Peter and Paul of to-day would never
be a match for that Peter and Paul of the old
days when violence and cruelty was an organized
and deliberate policy.

258

CHAPTER XIV

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

IT was midsummer when I went first to Mos-
cow, and the trees against the old Kremlin wall
were deep in green. Mother Moscow was
haughty then — aloof, superior. She sat serene
amid the golden domes of her churches that are
"forty times forty," an old, old lady, remote and
inscrutable like the East, the mystery of the ages
in her smile.

"Petrograd is not Russia," she said. "Float it
out to sea. Let the Germans take it. It is a
plague-spot. It is of the West. We shall be
well rid of it!"

Sometimes, in a mellower mood, she spoke of
Petrograd as one might speak of a naughty child.

"Petrograd is behaving very badly, but it mat-
ters little. She is really of small consequence.
Some day I may come to the limit of my patience,
and then— Well, we shall see!"

Poor Mother Moscow! How little she knew
259

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of that which was seething within her own ancient
walls.

Old Ivan Valiki, high up in the heavens, faith-
fully thundered the hours above the citadel of
church and state, and the music of the lesser bells,
sometimes a mad, barbaric revel, sometimes a
faint, wistful obbligato, accompanied him.

On the wide paths of the summer gardens the
blind beggars chanted their prayers, as usual.
Old Marya sat in the shade of the Sokolniki,
crossing herself, and the little one beside her rat-
tled a tin can for kopecks with one hand and made
mounds in the sand with the other.

In the Thieves' Market, on Sunday mornings,
the Muscovites bartered for boots and baby-car-
riages, and women from the country sold pickled
cucumbers and home-made sausage. Under the
trellised arbors in the parks, family parties gath-
ered around the brass samovars, and drank tea
in the Moscow fashion, with a bit of sugar be-
tween their teeth. Their laughter and their song
lacked neither merriment nor music, and Mother
Moscow was satisfied with both.

Before the sacred shrine on the Iberian Gate
a tiny lamp burned brightly, and an occasional

260

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

soldier, strolling by, stopped to cross himself, and
slowly to decipher the inscription that told how,
by special provision of the Almighty, the ikon
had been preserved from destruction throughout
the raid of Napoleon.

Inside the Kremlin the conquered cannons of
the Frenchmen, Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite
still mottoed on their iron sides, jostled the newly
packed boxes of ammunition awaiting shipment
to the front.

From Sparrow Hills at sunset the bulbous
domes of star-spangled green and blue, the fluted
golden cupolas, and gleaming crosses shone as
they must have done on that day, so long ago,
when Napoleon looked down upon the mystic
city and demanded that the keys be brought.

To Mother Moscow all was as it had been —
all was well. Mother Moscow's eyes were full
of the past, dimmed to the present, and blind to
the future.

She could not dream of that scarred city soon
to lie beneath the snows of winter.

As I wandered around the Kremlin, and its
mystery and barbaric beauty laid a spell upon
me, battle and bloodshed and the wild ways of

261

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

revolution seemed as remote as the days of the
Boyars.

But there were other hours — hours outside the
Kremlin — when I saw a different picture and felt
another impulse stirring beneath the ancient city's
calm.

There was the Governor-General's palace,
where, half the day and more than half the night,
workmen and soldiers discussed the fundamental
differences between political and economic revo-
lutions. That cry, already so familiar in Petro-
grad, "All power to the Soviet!" grew louder
and louder with each passing day, and I heard the
hectic speeches punctuated with the same "Bour-
geoisie!" "Counter-Revolution!" "Capitalists!"

There was a room, up near the top of a dingy
hotel, where stacks of literature were piled ceil-
ing-high, and returned exiles wrote revolution-
ary articles, addressed envelops, formed commit-
tees, and passed resolutions, while Mother Mos-
cow dozed.

Behind a desk in this room sat a dark -haired
woman with deep, sad eyes. There was a cash-
drawer in front of her, and all day long the peo-
ple, from factory and trench and farm, filed past

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

that desk and left their kopecks and their rubles.
The money was to buy a press to print more and
more Bolshevist leaflets, and a newspaper that
should call the people to revolution.

The seeds of their propaganda fell on ready
soil.

On the sides of the palaces of stone and stucco,
huge posters announced the opening of the opera
season of 1917 and 1918 under the direction of
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Committee. This
in the famous Balshoi Theater, where imperial
eyes had viewed the triumph of the greatest sing-
ers in all Europe!

Besides, if Mother Moscow had turned her
face for a day toward the Iberian Virgin, she
would have seen that the number of those who
paused to cross themselves before the sacred ikon
grew less and less, and the number of those who
went by without even a glance in that direction
continually increased.

Even when Mother Moscow invited Kerensky
to her for that famous Moscow conference, her
invitation was a summons, and she gave it in the
spirit of a mother telling her child that it was
time to come and be spanked. That meeting was

263

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

pregnant with prophecy; but Mother Moscow
did not heed.

There were men among the merchants and
maufacturers in Moscow who saw the handwrit-
ing on the wall, but they did not read it entirely
aright. They knew that all was not well in the
stronghold of capitalism and ancient conserva-
tism, but they thought all that was needed was a
little more time and trouble to make the people
ready to accept their will.

Here and there one remembered with misgiv-
ing the days of 1905, when Moscow became a
storm-center of revolt, while Petrograd knew
comparative quiet. Perhaps also here and there
was one who remembered a prophecy of the Tsar.
At that time the mighty men of Moscow sent pe-
titions to Petrograd, urging the government to
grant a constitution and other political reforms.
The Tsar replied, rather wisely, that nothing
short of economic reforms would ever satisfy the
people, and recommended that the manufacturers
grant these. Each group was willing to please
the people, but it must be at the expense of the
other. Neither was willing to sacrifice its own
power.

264

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

Now that political equality had come, the first
pseans of rejoicing had hardly sounded before the
economic demands found voice. Strikes in Mos-
cow grew more and more frequent. Production
steadily decreased. Many of the owners closed
their factories on the ground that they could not
be run upon the terms of the workers except at
a loss. Some shut down because they thought it
would the more quickly bring the workers to
their senses. Industry was completely disorgan-
ized.

It was not until four days after the .Bolshevist
uprising in Petrograd that Mother Moscow sud-
denly became aware that she was to be the battle-
ground of a class conflict quite as determined
and far more bitter than any that had torn the
scorned City of Peter.

It was Friday night, November 9, when the
first stray shots near the Moscow Duma signaled
the coming trouble. At three the following
morning the populace awoke to the alarm of a
heavy fusillade. For seven days the firing con-
tinued almost ceaselessly. There were pickets
on every corner, and on Tuesday heavy artillery
sent the guests of the Metropole and National

265

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

hotels to the cellars in search of safety. The
American Red Cross Mission turned its head-
quarters in the National Hotel into a first-aid
station.

The military school cadets, reinforced by some
of the older officers, were intrenched in the city
Duma, the Riding Academy, and the Kremlin.
The Bolsheviki conducted their military opera-
tions from the Governor-General's palace. As
the attack gained strength, the cadets were forced
back into the Kremlin.

The Bolshevist army was made up largely of
factory workers. The Moscow garrison, as a
whole, had agreed to remain neutral; but twenty
thousand soldiers offered to fight with the Bol-
sheviki, and it was estimated that about five thou-
sand took part. The critical moment came with
the arrival of a company of sailors and Red
Guards, sent from Petrograd to reinforce the
Soviet. Kaledin was supposed to be marching
to the rescue of Mother Moscow at the head of
the Don Cossacks, but his coming was as mythical
a performance as that of Kerensky's at Petro-
grad.

When the surrender finally came, the cadets
266

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

had been driven into a corner of the Kremlin.
Telegraph and telephone wires had been broken
by bullets, and Mother Moscow was cut off from
all contact with the outside world. Street-car
tracks were torn up, windows were smashed, the
stucco sides of the quaint old houses were pep-
pered with bullet-holes, and here and there the
front of a building had been crashed in or the
entire top story swept away.

The damage done to the Kremlin was slight —
nothing compared to what we had feared; and
if anything could dry Mother Moscow's tears
and restore her ancient self-respect, it was this
crumb of comfort.

Here, as in Petrograd, the defense of the Pro-
visional Government centered around the Duma,
and both bodies were dissolved by the Bolsheviki.
Mayor Rudineff held up his hands when I asked
him what he intended to do.

"We would like to issue an appeal warning
the people against the ruinous policy of the
Bolsheviki," he said; "but, unfortunately, the
liberty of the press being suppressed, it is im-
possible."

While only a handful of people were killed in
267

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

the Bolshevik Revolution in Petrograd, Mos-
cow's death toll is estimated at from seven hun-
dred and fifty persons to twice that number.
Probably the former figure is more nearly cor-
rect.

Close beside the Kremlin wall, in the holiest of
holy places, the workmen and soldiers of Moscow
dug the great trench that was to receive the bodies
of their fallen comrades. All day they dug, and
when night came they continued their work by
the light of torches. The ghostly linden trees
have stood watch over many strange scenes there
on the edge of the Red Square, but none stranger
than this crowd of silent men, speechlessly turn-
ing the earth through the long, chill, dark hours.
By daybreak they had finished.

It was the day of the proletariat. All others
stayed indoors. The streets, but for the mourn-
ers of the proletarian dead, were deserted. At
eight o'clock in the morning the procession
started, and all day long the people filed past —
a vast, endless throng of them, men, women,
and little children. There were no priests, no
prayers. Strong young soldiers in mud-colored
coats carried the red coffins on their shoulders,

268

MOTHER MOSCOW WEEPS

and above the heads of the crowd the crimson
banners flowed like a river of blood.

A sobbing, singing mass of human beings,
tragic and triumphant, filled the vast square.
Cavalry troops rode by at attention, and girls
with platoks on their heads carried great oval
bandboxed wreaths of artificial flowers. Some-
times a military band went by, playing a funeral
march, and sometimes the voices of the marchers
lifted in the deep, rhythmical strains of the
"Hymn of Eternal Memory." Men and women,
old and young, wept as they saw the coffins low-
ered into that yawning trench.

If Mother Moscow wept that night, her tears
fell quietly. She was in the presence of some-
thing big, something terrible, something magnifi-
cent— something unlike anything her old eyes
had ever seen before.

There was another day, another funeral, an-
other crowd of broken-hearted men and women.
Their crumbs of comfort were more meager, for
theirs was the bitterness of defeat; but they also
hugged the faith that the stalwart boys who lay
stretched in their coffins had died defending an
ideal.

269

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Worlds of space lay between those two groups
of mourners — they had no single thing in com-
mon but their grief. Their dead lay in the dark-
ened recesses of great churches, and priests in
funeral robes of black and silver said many
masses for the repose of their souls. There were
no red coffins, no crimson banners, no singing
multitudes — only prayers and silent tears.

When it was all over — the killing and the bury-
ing— and there was nothing left but the joy of
victory and the rancor of defeat, some one sud-
denly discovered that the light before the shrine
of the Virgin on the Iberian Gate had gone out.

All that was left of the sacred ikon was one
bullet-wounded angel. Two soldiers passing by
the shrine halted.

"Look!" said one of them. "They said it was

holy. It was just another of the d d lies they

have been telling us 1"

270

CHAPTER XV

BLASTING AT THE ESTABLISHED ORDER

REVOLUTION is unconstitutional and illegal.
In the scramble that follows the fall of tsar or
kaiser, the spoils are to the nimblest. Any gov-
ernment that ensues is an illegitimate child. It
can have no lawful parentage.

After the March Revolution, the first hurriedly
organized ministry took its power from the
Duma; but the Duma itself had lost its legality
with the overthrow of the Tsar who created it.
Each successive ministry was equally without le-
gal basis. No election giving them validity had
taken place.

There were, however, certain democratic move-
ments in the army and navy and among the work-
ers and peasants. The soldiers and sailors as-
sumed power and immediately elected commit-
tees. The workers organized Soviets. The
peasants, constituting approximately one hun-
dred and twenty-five million of Russia's hundred

271

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

and eighty million organized committees. There
were all-Russian conventions of each of these
bodies that functioned nationally.

In its inception the government of Lenin and
Trotzky was not sacrosanct in the eyes of the law,
but the largest democratic forces in the country
voted to support it.

The Soviet had its origin in the Revolution of
1905. At that time it was composed of workers.
Early in the Revolution of 1917 it was joined by
the Soldiers' Deputies, and became a Soviet of
Workmen and Soldiers. Soon after the acces-
sion of the Bolsheviki to power, the peasants' del-
egates combined with the others, and the Ail-
Russian Soviet was the result.

The local Soviet was simply a village or com-
munity council, like the old New England town
meeting. The will of the majority prevailed.
The local councils considered community prob-
lems and elected delegates, who met in what is
known as the Second All-Russian Congress of
Soviets of Workmen's, Soldiers', and Peasants'
Deputies.

It was this Congress that was in session at
Smolney on that November night when the

" Mother Moscow sat serene amid the domes of her churches'

After the Moscow battle

The Grave of the Brotherhood beside the old Kremlin wall

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

Bolshevist guns on the cruiser Aurora were de-
ciding the fate of the Kerensky Cabinet. It was
this Congress that created the Council of Peo-
ple's Commissaries — that astounding govern-
ment which was to make the old world stop still
in its path and gasp with amazement.

Night after night in the white hall at Smolney
I watched it hurling decrees at the established
order, smashing every "sacred" rule and prece-
dent of diplomatic procedure, and tossing verbal
bombs with equal dexterity at enemies and allies.

Not until some quiet hour of the future, when
the sociologists have had time to analyze those de-
crees, will the bewildered spectators looking on
at those "madmen," with theories in their heads
and bayonets in their hands, know how much
constructive work along the lines of their idealism
went into their making.

Even a superficial study will show the fallacy
of the popular Western conception that the con-
fusion in Russia was due to the absence of a for-
mal government. The chaos existed in spite of
the government, and continued because of lack of
material power to enforce the decrees.

That government amazed foreign diplomats.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The longest span of life allotted to it by them was
three weeks. Hourly they awaited its demise.
No diplomatic group in Russia, excepting only
the American Red Cross Mission, realized the
depth of its roots, the strength of its power, or
its probable longevity.

Even the Bolsheviki themselves were surprised
at its growing power.

"We can't succeed — Russia is too dark, too
backward. But we have shown the way the
world can follow. Other countries will succeed
where we fail," they said.

The first decree of the Second Ail-Russian
Congress of Soviets defined the form of what has
generally come to be known as the Soviet Gov-
ernment. It provided that, until the convocation
of a constituent assembly, "the direction of the
individual branches of the state's life will be in-
trusted to certain committees.'* "The govern-
mental power belongs to a collegium of the pres-
idents of these committees, called Council of Peo-
ple's Commissaries."

The decree of the new democracy of Russia
adopted a principle of recall declaring: "The
control of the activities of the People's Commis-

274

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

saries, and the right of removing them, belongs
to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Work-
men's, Soldiers', and Peasants' Delegates, and
to its Central Executive Committee."

This Central Executive Committee functioned
as a permanent parliament. The executive
power was vested in the Council of People's Com-
missaries, who also exercised legislative func-
tions. The decree named as temporary president
of the Council of People's Commissaries, or as
Commissary of Commissaries, Vladimir Oulian-
off (Lenin), and as Commissary of Foreign Af-
fairs L. D. Bronstein (Trotzky) Commissaries
of other departments were chosen and govern-
mental activities allotted much as they are in the
Western democracies. The decree mentioned
the commissaries by their own names and the
names by which they have come to be known in
the revolutionary movement.

Several subsequent decrees defined further
governmental powers and limitations. Decree
number nine vested all local power in local So-
viets, automatically abolishing all previously ex-
isting governing bodies ; and a later decree con-
firmed the right of the Soviet to levy taxes for

275

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

local needs. The eighteenth decree provided
what to my Western mind, looking for differ-
ences from and similarities to other governments,
seemed to be either a veto or a referendum. It
declared that all regulations or laws passed by
the commissaries could be "postponed, changed,
or removed" by the Central Executive Commit-
tee or the Soviet.

From the outset, the sessions of the Central
Executive Committee were stormy ones. There
were few objections to the passage of any de-
cree that we who looked on could have offered
which were not made by some one of those sol-
diers, workers, or peasants of Russia, nightly
groping along strange paths for a way to peace
and happiness.

In a bill of rights they declared for equality
and sovereignty of peoples. It was in accord-
ance with the second clause of this bill that the
Soviets later voted to permit Finland and
Ukraine to secede from Russia and establish in-
dependent states. The bill declared:

"The right of the peoples of Russia for a free
self -organization up to partition and the organi-
zation of an independent nation."

276

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

"The abolition of all national and religious
privileges and limitations."

"A free development of national minorities
and ethnic groups populating the territory of
Russia."

The last two clauses in effect granted religious
freedom to all sects, and affected particularly the
"old believers" and the Jews, who had always
been the object of pogroms and persecution.

The first decree passed after the creation of the
government was the decree of peace. By this de-
cree the government proposed at once to begin
negotiations for a "just and democratic peace."
It defined such a peace to be one "without an-
nexations and indemnities, and with the right of
self-determination." The decree abolished se-
cret diplomacy, and the government declared its
intention to publish the secret treaties. It ap-
pealed to the workingmen of France, England,
and Germany for aid, and after adverting to the
Chartists Movement in England and the revolu-
tions of the French proletariat, said :

"All those examples of proletarian terrorism
and historical creative genius are giving us a
guaranty that the workmen of the above-men-

277

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tioned countries will understand that the libera-
tion of mankind from the horrors and conse-
quences of this war depends on them. They give
us a guaranty that those workmen, with their
resolute and unlimited energy, will help us to
bring successfully to an end the question of peace,
and the liberation of all the working and ex-
ploited masses from any kind of slavery and
exploitation."

The day after Krylenko, the chief of the army,
started negotiations for an armistice conference,
I heard Trotzky begin his speech about the men
with whom he was to negotiate in a fashion quite
new in the annals of foreign diplomacy.

"Comrades," he said, "the bloody Kaiser and
his generals have entered into negotiations with
our comrade Krylenko, but not out of feelings of
deep sympathy for Russia and the Russian revo-
lution. If Germany could have had her own way
she would have attempted more than once to seize
revolutionary Russia by the throat.

"If the Kaiser and his generals, gritting their
teeth, are now expressing willingness to enter
into negotiations with a mere praporschik [non-
commissioned officer] — if they do that, it is only

278

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

because the Russian Revolution has cried to the
people of the world of slaughter, famine, and
disease in the trenches.

"The German Kaiser is now talking to us as
an equal with equals because he knows that the
uprising of the German workmen and soldiers
would be fatal to him if he should make a differ-
ent answer."

Sometimes, when a critical situation developed,
Lenin himself came to the meetings.

"We have to act, when action is due," said
Lenin. "We have the right to function as a gov-
ernment because we are a government."

One night, when one of Lenin's decrees was
under discussion, Trotzky came to speak for him.

The Soviet government knew that the peasant
would tolerate no further delay in the settlement
of the land question.

The land decree was passed, not by the People's
Commissaries, but by the whole Russian Soviet.
It abolished the landlords' property in land and
confiscated all landed estates with their movable
and immovable property, excepting the small
holdings of peasants and Cossacks.

The decree vested the administration of the
279

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

land in district land committees or district Soviets,
and declared that "any damage to the confiscated
property, which from now on belongs to all the
people, will be declared a heinous crime, punish-
able by the revolutionary court."

The regulations for the administration of land
were based upon instructions formulated by peas-
ants in two hundred and forty-two districts.
These instructions — or regulations, as we would
call them — had been collected and published three
months before the Soviet government took power.
The peasants, impatient of the delays of the
Kerensky government in solving the land prob-
lems, had taken the matter in their own hands.

The quantity of land to be distributed to the
laborer was determined by the needs and condi-
tions of the community. Such land could not
be alienated, leased, or mortgaged. It was pub-
lic property for the benefit of those working on
it. The right to use land was granted to all citi-
zens (without regard to sex) capable of cultivat-
ing it by personal or family labor. Hired labor
was not allowed. In case of incapacity due to
accident to a member of a rural community, the
community must cultivate his land for two years.

280

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

Farmers who, due to old age or inability, lose
forever the possibilities of cultivating the land
personally, lose the right of property. Instead,
they receive pensional help from the state. The
decree provided relief for those who suffered dis-
tress due to the confiscation of land. Such relief
was difficult to give because of the poverty-
stricken condition of the country, and to the own-
ers from whom the land was taken any relief
short of actual payment for the land (which the
peasants would not even consider) seemed inade-
quate.

All mineral wealth of the lands, the forests,
and the waterways became the property of the
state. Estates in intensive culture, such as
nurseries, greenhouses, breeding farms, were not
subject for distribution, but were to be used for
exhibitional and educational purposes.

The nearest thing to a property interest in
land was the provision that, while the land of a
"quitting member" must be turned back to the
land fund, "the right of preference for receiving
the estate of the retiring members belongs to the
nearest relative, or to persons indicated by the
retiring member."

281

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The form of the cultivation of the land was
left to the decision of the village. The land could
be cultivated by the community, by the individual,
or by the banding together of any number of
farmers.

In case of land shortage, the decree provided
for re-distribution of the population by induced
emigration.

A later land decree created a body known as a
Conciliatory Chamber to deal with all disputes,
and also enumerated in detail rules governing
the conservation of natural resources. Personal
property on the estates was not subject to dis-
tribution, but the land committees were ordered
to inventory and hold it for the benefit of the com-
munity.

Three weeks after the Soviet government took
the power, it completed its second most impor-
tant step in its attempt to create a socialist com-
monwealth. What the land decree was to the
peasant, the labor control decree was to the
worker. It applied to all industries employing
labor, and provided for control by committees,
representing laborers and employers, called
"organs of labor control." The control was not

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

confined to a regulation of hours and wages, but
extended to all branches of the industry, includ-
ing the financial phase.

"The commercial secret is abolished," the de-
cree declared. "The proprietors are obliged to
furnish to the organs of labor control all their
books and accounts and business correspondence,
under penalty of law."

The decisions of the organs of labor control
were binding alike on laborer and proprietor;
but the decree provided for an appeal to a higher
organ of labor control sitting in Petrograd and
made up chiefly of technicians. The right of ap-
peal was granted to both employer and employee.
An all-Russian Soviet of labor control was
created to coordinate all industries and direct the
economic life. The quantity of production was
to be determined by the needs of the community,
and the price fixed by the cost of production as
determined by the organs of labor control.

(The Soviet realized the impossibility of imme-
diately putting into effect any such radical over-
turn of the competitive system, and the decree
stated that the labor control must be effected by
gradual steps and regulation.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Just as the peasants frequently bad taken the
land >vithout waiting for decrees, the workers also
took the factories. The industry of Russia was
disorganized, and the control of factories had
practically passed to the workmen early in the
Kerensky regime.

The labor decree merely legalized an existing
condition and attempted to regulate that control.
[The members of the factory committee, sobered
by responsibility and a growing knowledge of
what was possible of accomplishment, found
themselves frequently in opposition to the work-
ers who had elected them. The demands of the
workers were naturally out of all proportion to
the earnings of the industry, and the chief task
of the committee was to educate the workers to
understand this.

The head of the shop committee at Sestroretzk,
a young Socialist named Woscup, told me that
his committee was frequently forced to resign
rather than grant the impossible demands of the
men.

Sestroretzk is the oldest arsenal in Russia. It
was founded by Peter the Great, and in 1917 em-
ployed sixty-five hundred men. The first strike

284

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

of the March Revolution started there, and the
first company of Red Guard was organized there.
Five thousand of its members were Bolsheviki.
The men demanded an increase of wages, which
was granted, but they also demanded back pay
beginning with May. The committee refused
this, and a quarrel followed. The committee re-
signed. "This is our government, and our gov-
ernment can not pay," Woscup explained. The
men, on second sober thought, saw the justice of
the refusal, and voted to reinstate the committee.

"The majority is usually reasonable," ex-
plained the young committeeman.

A decree fixing the salaries of the People's
Commissaries at five hundred rubles a month
proved an effective measure in controlling the
demands of the workers.

"The Commissary of Commissaries gets only
five hundred rubles a month," one committee told
some workmen who were demanding an increase.
"Surely you do not want to take more from your
government than Lenin takes." This argument
won.

The salary decree provided that an additional
hundred rubles a month should be paid to each

285

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

commissary for each dependent member of his
family. Under these terms, Lenin received only
five hundred rubles, while Trotzky, who had a
dependent wife and two children, received eight
hundred. Five hundred rubles was equivalent in
January to about fifty dollars gold, but its pur-
chasing power was even less.

The workers in government-owned industries,
such as posts, telegraphs, and railroads, were
given the same right of control as the workers in
privately owned industries.

Organs of the press "appealing to open re-
sistance to the government, or sowing disturbance
by means of slander or distortion of facts," or
inciting to criminal action, were decreed subject
to suspension.

This prohibitive legislation was so contrary to
revolutionary ideas that the Soviet, in passing the
decree, apologized in the following terms :

"The Workmen's and Peasants' Government
asks the population to turn its attention upon
the fact that in our modern society the wealthy
classes, hiding behind liberal screens, have the
possibility of seizing in their hands the lion's share
of the public press, and by means of it freely

286

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

poison the brains and consciences of the masses.
To leave it in enemy hands at such a time, when
it is not less dangerous than bombs and machine-
guns, is out of the question. That is the reason
those temporary but necessary measures of stop-
ping the stream of dirt and slander were taken.
The yellow and green press would drown with
pleasure our young victory in this stream. As
the new order will become consolidated, every
administrative oppression of the press will be
suspended."

The press became more and more vituperative
against the Soviet government, and published, in
addition to the accounts of existing chaos, count-
less rumors of outrages that never happened.
In retaliation, the government decreed advertis-
ing to be a public monopoly, and permitted pub-
lication of advertisements in government organs
only. In America such a provision would mean
the annihilation of the press ; but in Russia, where
circulation rather than advertisement is the
source of revenue, its effect was less drastic, and
opposition papers continued to be published.

Suppressed one day, they came out the next
under a new name. A paper called the Day was

287

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

published as the Night, the Midnight, the Two
A. M., and took various other liberties with the
clock.

The decree on education, drawn by Lunarchar-
sky, a writer and scholar, set forth the Soviet's
ideas of instruction. Since the first Revolution,
an educational committee had been at work in-
vestigating Russia's needs and formulating a
legislative program. Contrary to the spirit of
most of the ministries, this committee reached an
agreement with the People's Commissaries, and
continued its work in conjunction with them.

Local self-government in education was the
fundamental principle of the program. Each
locality had the right to determine for itself what
it would learn, and when and where and how.
The business of the governmental commission
created by the decree was "to serve as a junction
and helper, to organize sources of material, ideas,
and moral support of the local bodies."

The Soviet declared that, whatever other gov-
ernmental activities were curtailed, "the expendi-
ture on public instruction must stay high. A
generous budget for public instruction is the
honor and glory of every people. Every truly

288

Mario
Spiridonova

Lunarcharskv

Leon Trotzky

Nikolai Lenin

Krvlenko

Alexandria
Kolontai

Kamineff

Yesterday and today on the Marsovaya Tola — Priests with lifted ikons and gor-
geous robes and Red Guards with bayonets and crimson banners

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

democratic power in the domain of instruction of
the country where ignorance and illiteracy are
reigning, must take as its first aim the struggle
against darkness. It must obtain in the shortest
time a popular literation by means of an organiza-
tion of a system of schools answering the first
principles of contemporary pedagogy, and it
must introduce a general, obligatory, and gratu-
itous education."

All decrees regulating the individual lives of
people inclined toward wide freedom. The night
the marriage and divorce decree was passed,
there was a long discussion as to whether there
should be any limit to the number of divorces that
any individual should be granted.

The decree, as it was finally passed, declared
church marriages to be personal and private mat-
ters, and prescribed that the government recog-
nize only civil marriages. Marriage consisted
merely in the registration of intention made by
two people, with a department provided for that
purpose. Men were prohibited from marrying
under the age of eighteen, and girls under six-
teen, except in the trans-Caucasian district, where
child marriages are the established custom.

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Here the age was fixed at sixteen for men and
thirteen for girls. Polygamy was prohibited, as
was marriage between half brothers and sisters,
and between the insane. The contracting parties
were given the right to choose the name of either
husband or wife, or a combination of both names.

Divorce could be granted on the mere request
of either one or both. The law provided for the
care of the children in case parents could not come
to an amicable decision, and declared all children
born out of wedlock legitimate and equal in rights
and obligations.

There were various measures for the protection
of children. The child-labor decree prohibited
the employment of children under fourteen years
of age, and while it was under discussion the Com-
missary of Labor proposed that the year follow-
ing the age limit be raised to fifteen and even-
tually to twenty. This suggestion was not
adopted, but it fitted in with the general pro-
gram of education, which aimed to keep all the
children of Russia in school until they had been
given the opportunities that only a few of the
aristocrats in the past had enjoyed.

Women, and children under sixteen, were pro-
290

BLASTING ESTABLISHED ORDER

hibited from night work; and there was an eight-
hour law for workers, and a decree limiting the
number of hours of employment a week to forty-
eight. Among the social measures was decree
thirty-four, which transferred the control of pri-
vate hospitals to the government and obliged each
industry to provide one hospital bed for each
hundred workmen, and one maternity bed for
each two hundred workwomen.

Social insurance against injuries, sickness, and
non-employment was also provided in an elabor-
ately worked out decree.

One of the early measures was a national grant
of power to municipalities to commandeer all
empty premises suitable for lodgings, and to
billet in uncrowded apartments the residents of
overcrowded dwellings.

When the Soviet had completed decree
thirty-one, the five classes in civil life had been
abolished, and only one title was left in Russia—
"Citizen of the Russian Republic."

291

CHAPTER XVI

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

ABOVE the gray mist of Petrograd in winter,
the "terror" and the "guillotine" hung like threat-
ening swords.

Organized punishment was no part of the revo-
lutionary scheme, but every group of revolution-
ists who took power discovered, to their distress,
that it was easier to .will people into a line of con-
duct than to make them follow it.

The People's Commissaries were beset by
enemies on every side. There were traitors
within the ranks, and honest and dishonest ene-
mies without. There were the usual number
of weak or unscrupulous men in uniform who
find their way into every army and navy. All
were engaged, one way or another, in trying to
keep the poor, battered social machine from run-
ning.

All the courts that refused to recognize the
authority of the Soviet were promptly closed.

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

The few remaining open were required to operate
according to the decree of the People's Commis-
saries. The decree provided that the court
should decide all cases, in the name of the Rus-
sian Republic. It permitted the judges to be
guided in their decisions by the old laws "to the
extent in which they did not contradict the revo-
lutionary conscience and the revolutionary con-
ception of right."

When the decree abolishing the old courts was
passed, a Military Revolutionary Tribunal be-
came the chief judicial body. I was present at
Smolney Institute to witness its birth in one of
the stormiest of the stormy sittings of the Central
Executive Committee. In the words of the de-
cree, it was organized "to conduct a campaign
against counter-revolutionary forces, and in order
to settle cases emanating from campaigns against
marauders, speculators, sabotagers, and other
such merchants, officials, etc."

Petrograd greeted the day of its first sitting
with apprehension, and pronounced it "the be-
ginning of the terror." On that day press and
populace discussed little besides the guillotine.

It was a crisp, cold winter Sunday, and as I
293

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

crossed the great Dvortsovaya Bridge that spans
the Neva, and crunched through the heavy snow
to the palace of the Grand Duke Nicolai Nico-
laievitch, I kept telling myself again and again
that there could be no guillotine ; that the world
must have moved forward a little bit in that cen-
tury and more which stretched between this Revo-
lution and that of France.

Countess Panina was the first prisoner at the
bar. As Minister of Public Welfare in the
Kerensky Cabinet, she was the first woman to be
lifted to a place of official honor in Russia.
When the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the
government, Countess Panina had in her posses-
sion about ninety thousand rubles belonging to
the Ministry of Education. Being a liberal and
not a radical Socialist, she refused to recognize
the authority of the People's Commissaries, and
declined to turn the money over to Bolshevist
representatives.

No woman of the liberal group was so highly
esteemed as she. For years she had devoted her
life to the improvement of social conditions for
the workers. The Narodny Dom, the People's
House at Petrograd, where many of the revolu-

294

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

tionary meetings were held, was the result of her
labor. The people were tern with conflicting
emotions when she was brought to trial.

The music-room in the Grand Duke's palace,
where the favorites of other days entertained
their royal patrons, had been chosen as the scene
of the trial. It was a big, square auditorium,
paneled in rarest wood and roofed with delicately
tinted glass — all simple, beautiful, and subdued.
Into this setting the revolutionists had introduced
a semicircular table covered with shiny red
leather and skirted with a flouncing of turkey red
cloth. The electric lights had gone out, and the
room was lit by two garish red glass lamps with
green shades.

The tribunal consisted of seven men — two
peasants, two soldiers, two workmen, and the
president, Jukoff. Most of them sat stiffly on
the edges of green-brocaded silk chairs, and
looked as thoroughly uncomfortable as if they
were prisoners instead of the judges.

They were taking the job with desperate seri-
ousness. Jukoff alone seemed undisturbed by
the surroundings. He was a lean, clean-cut, in-
telligent-looking man. His eyes were deep set

295

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

beneath the roof of a high forehead. He wore a
neat sack-suit and a white collar.

The room was packed with a crowd of Countess
Panina's friends. They cast hostile glances in
the direction of the tribunal, and the atmosphere
was charged with the tensity of their feeling. A
red-headed camera-man with a journalistic sense
had established himself at a point of vantage.
On a bench against the wall sat the prisoner, a
soldier, looking very uncomfortable in a new and
shiny uniform of padded khaki and high hat of
sheepskin, standing on each side of her. The
Countess might have been a social worker in any
American city. She had a pleasant, round, well1
bred face, and a pair of kindty eyes. She wore a
severe black tailored suit and a small close-fitting
turban.

Jukoff opened the proceedings with a reference
to the part played by military revolutionary
courts during the French Revolution, and de-
clared that in Russia also the tribunals would
"defend with severity the rights and traditions of
the revolutionary peoples."

The charge was briefly stated. The prisoner
pleaded "not guilty." The documentary evi-

296

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

dence, a letter of Countess Panina's, was intro-
duced. There were no lawyers. Prosecutors
and defenders both came from the crowd. An
intellectual, J. Gurevitch, made a statement de-
nying the guilt of the prisoner. When he fin-
ished, a young workman, Ivanoff, took his place
before the judges. He was from the artillery
factory. A straw-colored Russian shirt, but-
toned on one side, was as much a part of him as
his fair hair and blue eyes. He spoke simply and
earnestly :

"If I have seen some light in my life, it is only
because she came into it," he said. "She has
given me the possibility of thinking. It was in
her Narodny Dom I learned to read. She is not
a countess here. This is no time for distinctions.
She is only a citizen who has given so much to her
people. I ask you to give her freedom, because
I would not want the world to hear that the Rus-
sian people are without gratitude."

As he walked to his chair, a professional man,
one of Countess Panina's friends, stepped for-
ward and shook his hand, and the crowd arose to
pay him tribute.

Naumoff, the prosecutor, arose. He was a
297

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

boy too, slightly younger than the other, and a
factory worker also. His dark brown hair was
closely cropped, and he wore a brown sateen
shirt matching a pair of snapping brown eyes.
As he began his attack, a murmur of dissent ran
through the crowd, and an old man in a gray
peasant's blouse rose from his chair. His face
and the top of his bald head flaming scarlet, his
long white beard shaking, both his hands waving
in the air, he shouted: "I can't stand it — I can't
stand it !" He was an old j ournalist from a prov-
incial paper to whom the Countess had long been
an idol. Two gray-haired women caught his
arms and led him from the court-room, protesting
violently as he went.

Naumoff continued:

"We should not look at it from the sentimental
point of view," he said. "I admit that citizeness
Panina is a noble woman, but the time has come
to struggle for the things that are the rights of
the people. The people must learn to read, be-
cause they have the right to know how to read,
not through the kindness of any one person."

So I had come from ordered America, not to
see the trial of the sweet-faced woman against the

298

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

wall. It was the trial of an idea — the sure basis
of human right against dependence on the benevo-
lent whim of the individual. It was the order of
the radical against the order of the liberal.
Charity and justice, privilege and right, were
having their day in court.

Two other speakers from the crowd followed
the factory boys. Then the Countess Panina
was asked to make a statement. Her breast rose
and fell. Finally she spoke, her words coming
faintly at first.

"I had taken the post, and I could not relin-
quish it except on order of the Master,' she said.
"The Constituent Assembly is the only power
that I shall recognize. The money is in an in-
stitution of credit, and I will turn it over when
the Master speaks."

She choked, stood silent a moment, and sat
down.

The court went out to deliberate. ' In a mo-
ment the room was in an uproar. Every one
was talking at once. Half an hour later, the
judges filed back to their seats, looking as un-
comfortable as when they had filed out. A Rus-
sian-American, a man named Krameroff, who

299

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

had been the head of the Russian branch of the
Socialist party in San Francisco, arose to pro-
test. The president of the court motioned to him
to be seated. He paid no attention. Jukoff
ordered two soldier guards to place him under
arrest. Krameroff still protested, then locked
arms with the soldiers and walked smilingly out
between them.

A sudden hush fell upon the court-room. The
friends of Panina held their breath in expectation
of the verdict.

Jukoff did not keep them long waiting. He
arose and began reading :

"The Military Revolutionary Tribunal, in the
name of the revolutionary nation, having exam-
ined the case with regard to the removal by Citi-
zeness Panina of a sum of about 93,000 rubles
from the funds of the Ministry of Popular Edu-
cation, decides (1) that Citizeness Panina shall
remain under arrest until she returns to the. Com-
missary of Popular Education the national
money taken by her and (2) the Revolutionary
Tribunal regards Citizeness Panina as guilty of
acting in opposition to the national authority, but,
in view of the accused's past, confines itself to

300

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

holding Citizeness Panina up to the reprehension
of society."

The reprehension of society! The scorn of
the people ! It was a typical Russian revolution-
ary decision, probable in no other land under the
sun. The crowd breathed a sigh of relief. No
one quite knew how to take it. The Countess
Panina's status remained practically the same.
Here and there some one started to clap. Others
quickly hissed them into silence. Again the
threatened "terror" had passed.

It was a far cry from this exhibition of revolu-
tionary justice to the guillotine — almost as far
as it was from that system of organized injustice
of the Tsars that kept the endless procession of
men and women marching toward exile and death.

A few days after the trial, friends of Countess
Panina paid the money to the Department of
Education, and the prisoner was allowed to go
free.

She held no grudge against the Bolsheviki ; for,
though she differed from them, she understood
their philosophy and the sincerity of their belief.
She had felt, from the first, the difficulty of recon-
ciling war and revolution, but believed, what-

301

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ever the price Russia must pay, she must never
go back again to the old order.

The intricacies of law played no part in sub-
sequent sittings of the Military Revolutionary
Tribunal. There were no convenient technicali-
ties either for the innocent or the guilty. Every
case was judged simply on its merits as workmen,
soldiers, and peasants interpreted right and
wrong.

There were thirty-six members of the full
tribune, divided into groups of six, each group
sitting for a week at a time. Commercial and
political offenders were tried by separate groups,
and the cases ranged from that of a boy who had
stolen a bundle of papers, to that of Puriskavitch,
who was taken with a machine-gun and other
counter-revolutionary paraphernalia in his pos-
session.

Both were handled with equal seriousness.
The boy's peculations amounted to something
like a ruble and sixty kopecs, and his victim was
an old woman who sold papers on the street.
He insisted that he didn't have anything, and
that all people who sold papers were really prop-
erty-owners, and when their papers were gone

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IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

they could always get more papers. At this, the
old woman became very indignant, denied that
she had anything to do with the bourgeoisie, and
insisted that she was just a poor workingwoman.

The court asked the boy what he did with the
money. He gave an accounting. The most im-
portant item was fifty kopecs for a ticket to the
opera at the Narodny Dom. He explained that
he was miserable and depressed, and he thought
if he could go to the theater the world might not
seem such a gloomy place. The judges listened
with sympathy, and one of them asked gravely:

"Did you feel better after you went to the
theater?"'

The boy nodded.

There was nothing incongruous to the jury
about the need for music. The Russian accepts
it as an extenuating circumstance quite as readily
as he would physical hunger.

The tribunal offered no censure, but decided
that the old woman must be reimbursed for the
loss of her papers. The boy had no money, so
the court ordered that he sell something. He
said he had nothing to sell. They looked him
over, and decided that his rubbers were the only

303

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

things with which he could part. Rubbers, in
Petrograd, were precious possessions. The lad
gave them up reluctantly. Then, remembering
the Narodny Dom, his face broke into a satisfied
smile.

"It was worth it," he said.

The most severe sentence I heard was that
passed upon General Boldireff, commander of
the fifth army, who was sentenced to three years'
imprisonment. General Boldireff had refused
to answer the summons of the Bolsheviki com-
mander-in-chief of the army, Krylenko, to at-
tend a council. When he was arrested, he said
he was acting in accordance with the resolution
of the Army Committee not to recognize the au-
thority of any party. The Army Committee
later reversed its decision, and resolved to obey
the orders of Krylenko ; but the General claimed
not to have known this until his arrest by sol-
diers of his army. Jukoff asked the General how
he would have behaved toward Krylenko if he
had known that the Army Committee had recog-
nized him as supreme commander-in-chief.

"At the present time," said the General, "I am
a citizen of free Russia, and obey only the will

304

IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

of the nation as it will be expressed by the Con-
stituent Assembly.

"I wished to preserve the army under my com-
mand from the struggle of parties, which would
disorganize it," he said. "I am myself a son of
the people, and honorably guarded the interests
of the sons of the nation that had been intrusted
to me. Those soldiers with whom I have shared
hunger and cold, the mud and dirt of the trenches,
the bitterness of defeat and the inspiration of vic-
tory, will admit this. I stood at my post like a
sentinel, until I was removed from it by force."

The soldiers who had arrested Boldireff ac-
cused him of sabotage tending to disorganize the
army, and called on the tribunal to punish him
severely. Other soldiers under his command
protested against the trial and pleaded in his
defense.

In pronouncing sentence, President Jukoif
said :

"In the name of the revolutionary people, the
Revolutionary Tribunal finds General Boldireff
guilty of disobedience to the chief, Krylenko ; but,
in view of the circumstance that he was not aware
that the Army Committee had altered its former

305

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

resolution and had decided to recognize Krylenko
as commander-in-chief, resolves to sentence Gen-
eral Boldireff to three years' imprisonment."

In a second the place was in an uproar. Cries
of "Shame! Shame!" "Despots!" swept the
court.

Jukoff ordered the room cleared, and the next
day warned the spectators against a recurrence
of any such protests.

A lawyer, Charykoff, was put on trial for ac-
cusing one of the members of the Inquiry Com-
mittee of belonging to the Black Hundred. The
offender apologized, and the punishment was
again nothing worse than "public reprehension."

Despite the mildness of the revolutionary judg-
ments, the talk of the guillotine continued. One
afternoon, when it was at its height, I dropped
in to the office of Jacob Peters — if one could de-
scribe as "dropping in" the intricate process of
finding one's way through the labyrinth of cor-
ridors and up the many steps that lay between
him and the sidewalk. He was on the top floor
of the old police station on the Corokhovaya,
where the Anti-Counter-Revolutionary Commit-
tee, successor to the Military Revolutionary Com-

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IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

mittee that had organized the Bolshevist Revolu-
tion, had its headquarters.

Peters was pale, tired, and disillusioned. Hu-
man nature, viewed from the dubious vantage of
the police station, left much to be desired. As I
passed through the outer office I noticed a woman
sitting there. Her plain face was pale, and
an occasional tear trickled from her frightened
eyes.

Peters sighed when I asked about her.
"She 's the secretary of the cadet party," he said.
"I have to question her to find out what she
knows about Counter-Revolutionary plots, and
I hate to do it. I wasn't made for this work:
I detest jails so that I can't bear to put any one
into them."

"What about the guillotine?" I asked.
"Surely the Russian Revolution will never resort
to that. It 's been over a hundred years since
the French Revolution, and I would like to think
the world had moved a little since then."

Peters shook his head. "No," he said; "we
will never restore the death sentence in Russia —
not unless" — he hesitated a moment — "not unless
we have to use it for men who are traitors in our

307

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

own ranks. What else can you do with a man
who betrays his own cause.

"There are so few of us to do the work," said
Peters. "We have to take every one who offers,
and it is impossible to know who are our true
friends and who are our foes. It is physically
impossible for me even to read thoroughly every
paper that I am asked to sign during the day. I
have to trust to others, and it is getting so that
I do not know who to believe."

With that, he opened the top drawer of his desk
and pulled out a revolver. He laid it down, then
took out three sealed packages of paper money.
The first one contained a thousand rubles. It
was a bribe demanded by Peters's predecessor in
this very office, a handsome, debonair young per-
son who rattled off French as rapidly as he did
Russian. I had met him only a few days before,
when he proudly announced that his name would
go down in history. Now he was reposing in
jail, and waiting for the Military Revolutionary
Tribunal to get around to his case. The chance
to become rich as well as famous had proved too
much for him. He called one night at a vaude-
ville theater which produced clever satires on cur-

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IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

rent politics, and ordered the place closed on the
ground that one of the playlets was counter-revo-
lutionary. Later, through an agent, he made it
known to the manager that the payment of a
thousand rubles would suffice to keep the place
open. The Bolsheviki discovered what he was
doing, dismissed him from office, and placed him
under arrest.

The second envelop contained fifteen thousand
rubles which had been taken the night before
from a food speculator, caught in the act of try-
ing to ship a large consignment of flour through
Finland to Germany. He offered a bribe of a
thousand rubles to a soldier at the Finlyansky
Station. The soldier hurried to Smolney with
the money and the news. He could not write,
so he made his mark upon the complaint to which
he swore. A detail of half a dozen soldiers and
Red Guardsmen was sent to help him. The man
was arrested, and evidence secured that unearthed
a whole nest of speculators.

There was no longer a secret police in Russia.
The Okhranka had gone with the Tsar into ob-
livion. But the people themselves were on the
watch for evidences of anything that might

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

threaten the power of the Commissaries. There
was little that went on in the city that did not
soon reach the ears of Jacob Peters's Committee.

A servant girl was sent to the Fortress of
Peter and Paul with a cake for her master im-
prisoned there. Wrapped in a parcel, lying on
the table near the cake, was a bundle of papers
that had been carefully collected to be put out of
the way of prying Bolshevist eyes. The servant
apparently inadvertently took the wrong pack-
age to the prison, where it fell into the hands of
the prison authorities. That the servant was not
as inadvertent as she seemed was indicated a few
days later, when she reported that Stephenovitch,
whom the Bolsheviki were trying to find, would
sleep that night in such a place, at such an hour.
When the Red Guard was sent to search, it was
as she had predicted.

When the Military Revolutionary Tribunal
began its sittings, more than a hundred specu-
lators were waiting to be put on trial. Peters
told me that one day he was riding on a street-
car, when the man sitting beside him engaged him
in conversation. He offered to sell him twelve
hundred bags of flour at two hundred and fifty

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IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE

rubles each, six thousand pounds of sugar, and
some butter. Peters got him to write down his
name and address, and within the hour he had
been arrested and his supplies had been seized.

One large consignment of flour was found hid-
Hen beneath the birch-wood logs in a barge on the
Moika Canal supposed to contain nothing but
wood.

Despite all efforts to unearth the offenders, a
few men waxed hideously rich upon the hunger of
the many. All provocation notwithstanding, the
guillotine remained simply a name. Wherever
the death penalty was inflicted, it was done by
mobs having no official sanction — by mobs
aroused to an uncontrolled fury, and momentar-
ily conscious of no other passion than that of re-
prisal. Considering the unsettled condition of
government, such instances of violence were not
so frequent as to change the character of the
Revolution into that of a Reign of Terror.

311

CHAPTER XVII

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

THE great gray wolf has always been howling
at the Russian door.

When revolution was still only a vague dream
of the future, an American traveler, finding his
way into a peasant's hut in a remote Siberian vil-
lage, discovered an American flour-sack hanging
beside the ikon on the wall. The peasant's wife
pointed to it, and with tears in her eyes explained
that it was her most treasured possession. It
came in the midst of the great famine, and
brought the wheat that saved her babies' lives.

The March Revolution began with cries of
"Bread ! Bread ! Give us bread !"

Vera, who took her place in the bread line at
three o'clock in the morning, saw the wolf skulk-
ing in the shadowy dawn. Ivan, who went with-
out his lunch because, even at the cheap working-
man's restaurant in the Vyborg district, he must
pay three rubles fifty for an insufficient meal,
hears him growling.

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THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

From February to February, the wolf howled;
yet somehow each succeeding group of Russian
administrators managed to keep him at bay.
Always next week he was coming; but, somehow,
miracles do happen in Russia, and he never quite
arrived. It was not until he made an alliance
with the human enemy of Russia that he finally
broke through and brought death to the hungry
people.

Three days after the Bolshevik Revolution, a
fatherly American official advised me to buy some
sardines and retire for the next two weeks to the
home of a woman friend.

"The people will be dying of starvation on the
streets within a week," he said, "and there won't
be any izvostchiks to carry you around, because
the horses will all starve to death."

How little we knew the Russians! It was six
months before that prophecy began to be true.
Long after the allotted two weeks, Roger Tread-
well, the American consul, and I, returning from
a visit to a sick countryman, raced the length of
the great white Nevsky in a sleigh drawn by a
wonderful black horse groomed and fed to the
pink of condition, while the driver, a peacock

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THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

feather rakishly nodding in his cap, shouted a
challenge to another izvostchik.

The Russian seems to be always equal to the
emergency of the moment. It is in organizing
the daily round of living that he seems to fail.
As soon as the Bolsheviki took command, they
sent commissaries to the grain districts to per-
suade the peasants to send supplies to Petrograd.
They pleaded the need of the Revolution, and
were more successful in getting a response than
their predecessors had been. They discovered
in the first days that carloads of cabbages and
potatoes were rotting in the warehouses for lack
of people to unload and distribute them. They
put soldiers and Red Guardsmen to work, and
when bread was scarce the multitudes were ap-
peased with an extra ration of vegetables.

It was impossible at any time during the year
to buy any of the necessities of life without stand-
ing in a queue. There were queues for bread,
sugar, kerosene, tobacco, goloshes, and sweets.
If cheap cloth was received in any one of the
shops, a line of women immediately appeared
outside the door in quest of a bargain. After the

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

fall of Riga, when the Germans were expected,
queues formed in front of the trunk shops. The
families who could afford it kept what they called
"queue maids," who had no other occupation than
to wait in line for provisions. In one of the
"want ads" I found a request for a servant, stat-
ing, "For queue work only." It became a regu-
lar source of livelihood for many people. Chil-
dren left school to stand in the queues. At first
they liked it. It was exciting to go out so early
in the mornings, and stand with many new peo-
ple, but as the days grew colder their little hands
and feet, ill-clad, made the waiting torture.

The great mass of Russians in the cities had to
do their own queue duty, and they came with their
babies and baskets in their arms, their heads done
in shawls or kerchiefs, and stood for endless
hours, waiting to present a ticket entitling them
to buy a pound and a half of sugar or the day's
ration of bread.

The rules of behavior in the queues were cre-
ated by the people themselves. At first women
who came with babies were allowed to go in with-
out waiting. Then a woman who had no chil-

315

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

dren hired her neighbor's child for ten or twenty
kopecs. The trick was soon discovered, and the
real mothers lost their privilege.

I frequently stopped to listen to the people in
the queues, and to get a better idea of their atti-
tude toward the various governments I sent
Marya, my interpreter, to stand in the lines.
Marya was a Russian student who at eighteen
had more knowledge stored away in her little
black head than the Western woman of forty.
She told me that the character of the queues
changed with the goods the people were buying;
but the people themselves were always in opposi-
tion to the government. Each time a new gov-
ernment came in, they would say, "Maybe they
will abolish the queues"; but a few days later,
when the lines remained the same, they declared
the new Cabinet was no better than the old.

"There is a Turkish saying," said Marya,
"that it is no good for the world to be wide if my
shoes are too narrow; and the women say: clt
is no good for the government to be Socialist if
the queues grow longer every day.' "

The bread queues were made up of working-
women, servants, a few students, and school-chil-

316

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

dren. The school-children brought their books
and studied their lessons. When it ^as not too
cold, the women brought needlework or crochet.
A few read newspapers for the first time in their
lives, having had no time at home. The high cost
of living was the chief topic of discussion, and
politics had little place here. As Marya wisely
said:

"Mothers who are worrying about their babies
left at home alone, and who are afraid to get no
bread for them, don't care for politics."

The tobacco queues were made up largely of
soldiers who were buying to sell again. They
expected to make money, so their mood was bet-
ter, and they laughed and joked as they stood
waiting.

The chocolate queues were composed of men
and women of the bourgeoisie who could afford to
buy sweets. Conversation here was about the
disorganization of the army, the roughness of the
soldiers, their want of good manners, the Social-
ism that would ruin Russia, the impossibility of
living in Petrograd now, and frequently a regret
for the days of the regime, "when, at least, we had
some order."

317

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The kerosene queues were like the bread
queues. They were made up of poor people let-
ting rooms without electricity. The conversa-
tion was of hard times — perhaps of a grand-
mother who "eats much, but is not even able to
stand in a queue."

The theater-ticket queues, which became
smaller as the bread lines grew larger, were com-
posed of students and re-sellers. The students
chatted gaily of the soprano of Z., or the feet of
the ballerina X. The speculators did not talk at
all, and the students treated them rather dis-
dainfully.

The trunk queues were the strangest of all.
Marya described them as "respectable people
whom fear has obliged to forget their respectable-
ness." She said it was universal, direct, equal,
and open fear. They had completely lost their
wits. They were afraid of Germans, of Social-
ists, of peasants, of soldiers. They feared to lose
their peace, their comforts, and their lives. They
feared to stay in Petrograd, and they feared
equally to leave.

Marya was even more critical of the people who
318

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

stood in queues waiting for the street-cars. She
said that all civilization, good manners, and deli-
cacy comes off when a Petrograd inhabitant
wants to get into a car. The street-car queues
were made up chiefly of teachers, clerks, business
men, students, and small officials. They were
cold, fearful of being late, and preoccupied.
They buried themselves in their newspapers and
seldom spoke.

Heaven help Vera and Ivan if their shoes fol-
lowed in the footsteps of most shoes and wore
out. To get a new pair, Ivan had to stay away
from the factory for a whole day. In the even-
ing, when the factory closed, he took his place in
a long line on the Morskaya, and settled down to
twenty-four hours of waiting. He borrowed a
few wooden paving-blocks from the pile that was
always waiting to patch up the holes in the street,
and made himself as comfortable as the weather
permitted. For the length of a block in either
direction were hundreds just like him. All
night he would sit there, chattering with his neigh-,
bor or dozing off to sleep. Sometime the next
day he would be rewarded with — no, indeed;

819

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

not a pair of shiny new boots, but simply a
numbered ticket that entitled him a month later
to take his place in line again and get his
boots.

It was estimated that Russia's grain crops were
only fifty to sixty per cent, of normal. At the
time of the downfall of the Tsar forty per cent,
of her locomotives and rolling stock was out of
commission. For three years fifteen million of
her men had been out of production. Russia's
front had been mobilized without regard to her
rear. The burden of feeding the fifteen million
had fallen upon women, old men, children, and
the young men who were not fit for military serv-
ice. To overcome even partially this great loss
of man-power, it would have been necessary to
apply every possible kind of modern labor-saving
device and obtain from the remaining workers the
maximum of efficiency. Russia did neither of
these two things.

Labor-saving machinery was not used to any
great extent in the old days, because there was
so little value put upon labor. Man-power was
the cheapest thing to be had in Russia. The Rus-
sian worker had no stake in his job, and was as

320

In open-air bazaars where there is little to sell but many to buy, Russia does he*

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

careless of time as the ruling class was careless
of man-power.

The Russian's attitude toward his job was the
attitude of the slave laborer — something done be-
cause it had to be done. The greatest flaw in his
revolutionary teaching was that it had not given
him a knowledge of the interdependence of peo-
ple. He had not learned that the only way he
could get his share of grain from the peasant was
to make the cloth or the plow that was as neces-
sary to the peasant and his wife as bread was nec-
essary to him.

Nothing in the Russian system had helped to
teach the worker his importance in the social
scheme and his social responsibility as a producer.
That was a thing he had to discover for himself.
The leaders realized this, and the shop committees
tried to make the men realize it; but it was the
sort of thing that could be learned only through
bitter experience.

Time was of so little value in Russia that no-
body ever bothered to learn how to save it. Pro-
duction naturally decreased steadily in the first
three years of the war, and kept on decreasing
after the Revolution. The shop committees did

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

not make the confusion, but, like the committees
in the army and in the fleet, they were outgrowths
of the confusion that followed the fall of the
Tsar, and the economic revolution that deposed
the owner from his control over his factory.
They were the effort of the men themselves to
establish something that would bring order out of
confusion. That they failed was due to lack of
experience and not to lack of good intentions.

The gray wolf cared not how his hour came,
only that it came.

Even the foreign colony, whose members were
far better off than the Russians, heard the gray
wolf howling. We were a hungry lot from morn-
ing until night. Most of us developed an appe-
tite such as we had never known. We scraped
the plates clean. The first time I dined with a
man who put the left-over sugar in his pocket, I
gasped. It was not until I had drunk many
glasses of sugarless tea and eaten many bread-
less meals that I was able to overcome sufficiently
the inhibitions of my early training to permit me
to follow his example. Even to the end, I had a
guilty sense of committing a horrible crime every
time I whisked the last piece of black bread sur-

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

reptitiously into my hand-bag. Usually, by dint
of much scheming, I managed to keep a small
quantity of food on hand for the hungry mortals
who drifted through my little blue room each
day. The original supply came with me in cans
across Siberia from China, and it seemed to par-
take in its stretching quality of the nature of the
widow's cruse.

On the mornings when there was breakfast, I
ordered two portions, to have bread for afternoon
tea and late suppers. Stewart P. Elliott, a fel-
low San Franciscan, was an American whom the
colony will never forget. He was always turn-
ing up with life-savers in the shape of boxes of
biscuits or cans of condensed milk. In Decem-
ber, when my supplies of sugar and tea were just
about exhausted, Charles Smith, the new Asso-
ciated Press correspondent, arrived from Peking
with tea and crackers and all sorts of priceless
possessions, including two cakes of soap and a box
of talcum powder. So precious a gift I had
never received before.

In Russia, one's room is one's castle. Visitors
are never announced, and one must be prepared
at all times for unexpected callers. The first

323

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

time the hotel clerk sent an early-morning visitor
up to discover me with an unmade bed, my pru-
dish American instincts drove me in search of a
screen. Once so camouflaged, I could ignore its
presence in perfect calm.

Life was naked in Russia — bare as the arms
of the silver birches before winter came to cover
them up. All that was real, all that was vital, —
the best and the worst of men, — lay close to the
surface. Heroes have never appealed to me ; but
the amazing number of simple, unobtrusive vir-
tues that the ordinary mortal can carry about his
human person is a miracle that never ceases to
thrill me. There is a bond between those of us
who searched for values beneath the turmoil of the
revolutionary year that would be hard to break.
A broader base of friendship, a deeper comrade-
ship, is building for men and women the world
over in the stress of these days of living under the
shadow of death and disaster. Perhaps it is one
of the best things we shall save out of the wreck
of the war.

We were a strange lot, we Americans. We
divided naturally into two camps. Some of us
were uncompromising idealists, and some prag-

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

matists, and more were the usual complex mix-
ture of both. Most of us took away from Russia
what we brought. One of us brought the Colum-
bia School of Journalism, and, no matter how
revolution raged or food prices soared, Colum-
bia's star remained undimmed.

A few men whose lives had been cast in entirely
different places saw a new vision, and they will
never be the same again. Colonel Thompson was
one of these. The real test of his interest in Rus-
sia came one day soon after the fall of the Keren-
sky government, upon which he had banked all
his hopes.

"I 've been out walking around the streets to-
day and looking into the faces of the Red Guard,"
he said. "They 've got fine faces. They 're real
—they 're sincere. Perhaps these people need us
now more than ever."

It was a long journey for a Wall Street mil-
lionaire.

There was another American, a New York
banker, as fine a type as I have ever met. The
Russian struggle thrilled him as nothing else had
ever done.

"I never wanted anything so much in my life
325

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

as I want to help Russia," he said. "If I were
thirty years old and had no family, nothing on
earth would take me away from here."

I did not know until I had returned to Amer-
ica just how deeply the Russian Revolution had
gone with him. He went to his firm and told
them he was no longer of any use to them. "I 'm
not interested in the same things," he said. Soon
afterward he went to France to do a piece of
humanitarian work for the government.

Everywhere, day and night, we fought the end-
less battle of revolution.

"You do not know the Russians," said the old
residents, shaking their heads at those of us who
professed to find something more vital than Ger-
man money at work among the masses. "If you
had lived here as long as we have — "

"That's just it," we replied; "you have lived
here too long. Your roots are buried too deep in
Russia's past. You see the Russians as slaves.
You can not see them as human beings."

It raged across tea-tables in the charming
apartment of the naval attache, where we gath-
ered occasionally to eat the tiny hot white rolls
which, wolf or no wolf, found their way to Mrs.

326

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

Crosley's tea-tray every Thursday afternoon. It
stormed around General Judson's dinner-table.
We carried it into the Turkish Room, where we
curled up on the great wide Russian divan for
coffee, and upstairs to the shiny ball-room, where
we one-stepped and waltzed to an American
phonograph.

As prophets the old residents were hopeless
failures. They were always backing a "man on
horseback," or setting a date for the restoration
of the monarchy, then moving it up a week or two
as time found their predictions unfulfilled.

If Petrograd offered no sensation for a day,
there was always Captain Harry Brown's com-
munique to give us a real thrill. Captain Brown
was an oldtime New York newspaper man at-
tached to the Red Cross Mission, and he wrote
for an exclusive circulation a daily summary of
all the rumors that came in from all parts of
Russia. Neither truth nor fiction could ever
rival those documents for interest. They were
an amazing combination of both.

There was much good talk in my little blue
room. All kinds of people found their way there.
Every shade of political opinion was expressed.

327

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Most often it was of Russia we talked, but some-
times we wandered far, far away. The fight we
fought so good-naturedly was the same that is
being fought on the battlefield of the world — the
struggle of the old and the new.

One night the Baltic states was the topic, and
there was a Czech whose burning spirit would
have withered the Kaiser if we could only have
produced him at that moment.

"No matter who makes peace, the Czecho-
Slavs will go on fighting until they give us back
our country," he said. "We are attacking from
four directions, and we are going straight to Ber-
lin. We 're going to get the Kaiser ; and when
we get him, we '11 feed him on pigs' liver — raw —
half a pound a day."

Another night we listened to a handsome
young Serb who was trying to help the Russian
radicals make Socialists of the Austrian prisoners
and organize them to resist German attacks on
Russia. There had been a meeting of the Aus-
trian prisoners that day in the Cirque Modern,
and two thousand of them had pledged them-
selves to defend the Russian Revolution against
a German attack, and to work to get revolution-

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

ary propaganda to the German and Austrian
trenches.

Sometimes it was Raymond Robins who held
our attention, and no one saw better than Ray-
mond Robins the significance of Russia's place
in the future settlement of the international prob-
lem. He knew that, from a practical as well as
an ethical viewpoint, the Allies must not abandon
Russia to the Germans. Most often the talk
turned to the necessity for making the people at
home understand the complex and difficult situa-
tion as it really is.

Sometimes it was Arthur Ransom, the Eng-
lish writer, who said things that any of us would
like to have said — fine, true, penetrating things,
like a flashlight in dark places. He had lived a
long time in Russia, and had wandered over the
country in a cart, learning the stories of the land
from Cossacks with whom he camped on the
roadside, and from peasants who lit their
samovars for him.

Frequently there came a knock that brought
us promptly back to the moment. Late one
night John Reed came in to announce that they
were shooting in the Winter Palace Square.

329

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

The wine-cellars of the Tsar had been broken
open, and a new danger was facing the Soviet
government.

Another menace had come to Petrograd, for
the moment more threatening even than the gray
wolf. Unknown to all of us, a sleeping serpent
had been lying beneath the city's surface, waiting
for the hour to stir and strike. The city was
mined with wine-cellars, and the forces working
to prevent any government of the people from

succeeding in the restoration of order took ad-

•

vantage of them.

The Revolutionary Committee discovered eight
hundred such places. In one wine vault alone
there were twelve hundred thousand bottles. In
the Tsar's cellar the champagne had lain undis-
turbed for three hundred years. The wine in the
cellars at the Winter Palace was valued at thirty
million rubles. The government of People's
Commissaries, desperately in need of foreign
credits, thought first of trying to sell it to Eng-
land and America. Some of the members op-
posed this.

Just after the trouble began, I went to the
office of Jacob Peters, and found him and the

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

Military Revolutionary Committee frantically
trying to devise some way to meet the crisis.
They realized that all that was needed to bring a
real reign of terror to the city was to madden the
soldiers with drink.

While I talked to Peters, the telephone bell
on his desk kept interrupting. Each time he
took down the receiver, it was to discover that
trouble had broken out in some new and unex-
pected part of the city. He was pale and
worried.

"I don't know what to do," he said. "I was
afraid of this, and I voted to put the wine in the
Neva ; but we needed money so badly, some of the
others thought it was a shame to destroy it. The
sailors were going to load it on the barges and
take it to Kronstadt to keep until we could send
it away. But provokators told the soldiers the
sailors were taking it to drink. Now we are go-
ing to break the bottles, and pump out the cellars,
and finish with it all."

It was harder to do than to say. For weeks
afterward they kept discovering more and more
wine-cellars.

The wine pogroms seem always to have started
331

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

in the same way. Some unknown person would
telephone to a hospital where there were con-
valescing soldiers, or to a barracks in the neigh-
borhood, and announce that there was free wine
to be had at such and such an address. As the
crowd began to gather, there was usually some
one in the street with a few bottles of wine to get
things started. Before long the soldiers were de-
manding wine and more wine. Some one con-
veniently broke in the door, or perhaps an irate
proprietor in opposition to the Soviet govern-
ment invited them in to help themselves. Fre-
quently, before the disturbance was quelled, there
was shooting.

The People's Commissaries went systemati-
cally to work to find all the cellars. Wherever
they discovered one, they sent in a group of
trusted soldiers and Red Guardsmen whose revo-
lutionary spirit was sufficiently strong to with-
stand the temptation of the liquor, to smash the
bottles.

One afternoon I was motoring over on the
Petrograd side of the Neva, when I passed a big
public garden. A guard of soldiers had been
placed around the entrance to warn all passers-by

THE GREAT GRAY WOLF

to walk in the street. A fire-engine was busily
pumping. At first I thought it was a fire, but I
saw neither smoke nor flames. I got out of the
car, and asked one of the guards what was hap-
pening. He told me they were smashing three
hundred thousand bottles and pumping the wine
out with the fire-engine.

From a back entrance two soldiers came with
a third whose steps were suspiciously unsteady.
His companions, leading him off to arrest, were
pouring a volley of abuse upon him, accusing him
in picturesque language of being a traitor to the
Revolution and several kinds of good-for-nothing
with which only the Russians are familiar. The
man had slipped in through the back gate when
no one was looking. The young soldier in com-
mand of the crowd ordered that an extra guard
be placed at the gate and no one allowed to pass.

They did their work in the same way all over
the city. But new wine-cellars came to light
faster than they could destroy them, and before
the dragon was finally slain several poor deluded
fellows lost their lives. The night the Winter
Palace cellars were broken into, we thought the
whole populace was going to be killed; but it

333

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

later developed that the sounds we had taken for
shots were nothing more fatal than popping
corks, and the soldiers who lay on the white snow
were not dead, but merely dead drunk.

This method of provocation was not new in
Russia. It had been used in the old days by the
Black Hundred, and in the retreat from the
southwestern front the Germans resorted to it.
They captured a town, stocked the houses with
liquor, and retreated again. When they had
gone, the Russian soldiers drank the wine, and
the horror of outrages committed in the debauch
that followed was one of the most tragic things
in those unhappy July days. When havoc was
complete, the Germans came with cameras and
made photographs, which were sent back to Ber-
lin for propaganda purposes.

334

CHAPTER XVIII

TSARS AND PEASANTS

WHEN the peasants in a remote South Rus-
sian village received word from the great city
that the "Little Father" had been put off his
throne, and that they, the Russian people, were
now the rulers of the land, they shook their heads
skeptically.

The message that brought the news invited
them to send delegates to a congress of workmen,
soldiers, and peasants in the far-away capital.
Some were for doing it; others counseled differ-
ently. Finally they hit upon a plan that satis-
fied every one. They elected the most disrepu-
table of the village characters to go to Petrograd.

"But why — " asked the bewildered squire of
the big estate — "why did you choose these? Se-
mon is a thief, and — "

"Once before they fooled us," explained the
peasant spokesman. "It may be true that the
Tsar is no longer the ruler of Russia, but it may

335

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

be just another trick. In 1905 they told us to
send delegates to Petrograd, and what did they
do? They put our people in prison. If this
is a trick, they will put the thieves in jail and
we will be well rid of them. If it is the truth,
we can send others to take their places."

Out on the banks of the ice-bound Yenesei,
up on the northern edge of Archangel, down on
the Bessarabian plain — all over the great white
land — little handfuls of peasants, bundled up in
their fur-lined shubas, were putting their canny
caution to work on this thing that was said to
have happened in the City of Peter.

It was a caution born of years filled with
slaughtered hopes and broken promises. All
over Russia men and women eager to believe in
the dawn of freedom were fortifying themselves,
in one way or another, against a recurrence of
the disappointments of the past.

To the peasant, revolution means land, free-
dom means land. He knows land. He wants
land. He thinks in terms of land. Land means
food for his children, warmer shubas for himself,
and education for the next generation. Land
means life.

336

TSARS AND PEASANTS

No revolutionary party that did not make land
to the peasants the first plank in its platform
could hope to survive in Russia. Ever since
Alexander freed the serfs, the peasant has be-
lieved himself the rightful owner of the land.
Under serfdom the land-owners dictated the en-
tire terms of living of the peasants. They were
flogged, sent to military service, and even forced
into unwelcome marriages, as punishment for
trivial offenses. Even when they were exem-
plary in the eyes of their owners, their right to
marry as they chose was subject to the whim or
the economic advantage of their owner. In re-
turn for their services upon the estate of the
land-owner, the serfs were allowed a certain
amount of land from which to take their own
living. It was to the advantage of the land-
lords to feed his serfs sufficient to keep them in
good condition for their service to him.

After the serfs were freed, the situation
changed. The peasants, instead of receiving the
land from which they were used to making their
living, frequently received inferior land and a
smaller quantity. Their bodies were free, but
they found themselves economically more com-

337

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

pletely enslaved than they had been before.
Their bitterness grew. In the early seventies
there were agrarian uprisings in which bands of
peasants burned the estates of the landlords.
The landlord became the hereditary enemy, and
the burning of his estate, which they regarded
as their own, their habitual form of protest.

As soon as the peasants were convinced that
a real revolution had taken place in Petrograd,
they began demanding their land; and, since its
distribution was delayed, they began to take it.

Many involved schemes of distribution were
advocated by various groups. A minority be-
lieved in compensating the landlords, but the ma-
jority asked: "What is the use to pay for that
which belongs to us? Why should we reward
them for keeping us all these years from our
own?"

The land program of the social revolutionists
was the one that best met the demand of the mass
of peasants, and they flocked to support it.
After the success of the Bolshevist Revolution
the right Social Revolutionists accused the Bol-
sheviki of having stolen their land program.
Lenin and Trotzky replied that the plan of the

TSARS AND PEASANTS

Bolshevik! was to apply everything that was
good, regardless of its origin.

How to capture and hold the support of the
peasant was the chief problem of every revolu-
tionary leader in Russia. The story of Nich-
olas Tchaikovsky, called the Grandfather of the
Russian Revolution, who formed the first peas-
ants' council, is typical of the struggle. Tchai-
kovsky is one of the three survivors of the first
revolutionary group. Before the March Revo-
lution, Tchaikovsky, who had spent most of his
life in exile or in prison, had made temporary
peace with the government for the purpose of
helping to win the war. He was working behind
the lines along the front, establishing agricul-
tural committees to sow the deserted land.
When Rodzianko's proclamation declaring the
abdication of the Tsar reached him, he started
immediately for Petrograd. He joined the
Council of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies,
but found himself entirely out of place there.
He shook his fine old white head as he told me
about it.

"I believed," he said, "as I do now, that the
defense of the country was the first consideration.

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Whenever I mentioned the war, they answered
that the English and French bankers were the
only ones who wanted the war to continue, and
that the French and English people were as eager
for peace as they were. Having lived in Eng-
land for twenty-eight years, I knew better. I
could not sleep. I lost my temper. They
laughed at me. I found myself a reactionary,
an imperialist. After three weeks I decided I
could stand it no longer, and asked them to send
a more patient delegate to take my place.

"I started to work to create a council of peas-
ants to bring in a more sensible current. Dele-
gates from twenty-seven provinces came, and on
May 4 the council was held. There were thir-
teen hundred and sixty delegates, and a Central
Executive Committee of two hundred and fifty
members remained in Petrograd to carry on the
work. About a hundred of these kept going
back and forth to the provinces; but every time
they came back they reported that the Bolshevist
influence had swept through the local peasant
councils, and they found themselves entirely out
of the trend. Some of them became Bolsheviki.
The others could not stem the tide, and soon we

340

TSARS AND PEASANTS

found that the peasants had a great distrust of
the Central Executive Committee. What are
we to do now?" he said. "I don't know."

Tchaikovsky was utterly at sea. Fine, bril-
liant old idealist that he was, he could neither
control nor understand the course of the Russian
mass. His executive committee was completely
repudiated, and all he could do was to shake his
head. His last hope was the Council of the Re-
public; and when that was disbanded by order
of the Bolsheviki he was in despair. He came
one day to a meeting of the railroad workers,
where he made a speech of protest against the
Council of People's Commissaries, and threatened
them with terroristic methods. His long beard
shaking, his kind eyes aflame, he lifted his
clenched fists and shouted:

"We know how to use the terror against ty-
rants. We have used it in the past, and we will
use it again."

I went to three national peasants' conventions
in Petrograd, another in Moscow. They started
peacefully enough, but before they were over, the
bearded men from the far-away places were shak-
ing their fists in one another's faces, and gen-

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

erally it ended with the majority going over to
the left and the minority starting another con-
vention all its own. Old Nicholas Tchaikovsky
was left behind early in the struggle, and the
contest for control of the peasants rested with
Chernoff and Marie Spiridonova.

Soon after the Bolshevist Revolution, the peas-
ants met in national convention, and there were
stormy days and nights before the majority
finally recognized the government of the People's
Commissaries and elected delegates to the Xa-
tional Council of the All-Russian Soviet. The
peasants stated the terms upon which they would
enter the Soviet. Trotzky and Lenin at first
fought compromise on those terms. The peas-
ants said they would enter the convention if they
were given a representation of a hundred and
eight members, but would accept nothing less
than this, which was a number equal to that of
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils.

The agreement on the peasants' terms was
reached one morning at three o'clock, and the
next day a great celebration took place. The
Pavlovski regiment was chosen as honorary es-
cort to the incoming delegates, and marched to

342

TSARS AXD PEASANTS

the headquarters of the Executive Committee
of the Peasants' Soviets. They were joined by
a great crowd of sailors, Red Guardsmen, and
women. They marched with red banners, sing-
ing and cheering as they went.

At Smolney they crowded into the great audi-
torium, and packed the halls. They overflowed
into the courtyard, and hundreds of them who
could not get in held an impromptu meeting out-
side. They called it the Marriage Day of Revo-
lution, and one patriarchal peasant well over his
threescore and ten, with snowy hair and ruddy
cheeks, a typical villager whose language was
the crudely picturesque dialect of his gubernia,
said:

"I was not walking to Smolney to-day. I was
carried through the air on the wings of my en-
thusiasm."

His name was Stackhoff, and there were still
stranger days in store for him; for they were to
put him on a train and whisk him away into the
land of the Germans to take part in the armistice
negotiations at Brest-Litovsk.

"We are all used to seeing young men fight-
ing," said a factor}- worker, thrilled by the words

843

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of the aged peasant; "but when we see such spirit
and determination in the old, Russia can not per-
ish."

"Who will dare now to raise a threat against
our Revolution, when it is defended by the mas-
ters of the land and the masters of the arms?"
asked another.

Through the summer and winter the peasants
kept flocking to Petrograd. Sometimes they
were sent as delegates to a convention. Quite
as often they came from some far-away province,
sent by their fellow villagers to find out what
was really going on in Russia.

The case of Mikhail Ivanovitch was typical.
The gubernia where Mikhail lived was hundreds
of versts from Petrograd. Mikhail had never
been farther away from his little thatched hut
than the distance of a fair day's drive, there and
back, for his sturdy Siberian pony. It was seven
days after the overthrow of the Tsar before Mik-
hail knew there had been a revolution in Petro-
grad. The Korniloff fiasco had been replaced by
a new crisis in the surging capitol before Mikhail
and his friends put their heads to work on the
tangled mystery. Eight months passed, and he

344

TSARS AND PEASANTS

and his neighbors were still groping about in the
dark. They wanted to play their part, but they
did n't know what to do. When news of the Bol-
sheviki Revolution finally arrived, they made up
their minds that Mikhail must go to Petrograd
and find some one who would come back and tell
them all about it.

There came a day when Mikhail stood up in
the great white hall in Smolney, his voice trem-
bling with excitement and his blue eyes, under
the sun-bleached bangs of brown hair, wide with
wonder.

"I came from far away," he said. "We are
dark there — very dark. We want to do the right
thing, but we don't understand. You must send
some one to tell us. We will pay — the money
does not matter. The revolution came, and they
told us the 'Little Father' was no longer here.
They told us we would have land and peace and
implements for our farms. The same officials
were still in the same offices, but instead of being
cross and brutal to us they were polite to us now ;
yet they refused what we wanted just the same,
and things did not get done any better than be-
fore. We were still poor, and they kept our

345

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

land. Then you made a revolution. The offi-
cials were a little more polite, but that was all
the difference."

Mikhail hesitated for a moment, hunting for
words.

"I know things have changed," he said, "be-
cause it used to be that one could hardly even
look at a palace, and now I may look at all the
palaces as long as I like. I may go inside, and
they tell me that I may even see Tsar Lenin
himself."

Mikhail was the first of the peasants who had
called Lenin "Tsar," and his audience roared with
delight. They appointed a committee to take
him to see the chief of the People's Commissaries,
and when they sent him back to his gubernia there
was little he did not know about the wild ways
of revolution.

The Russian peasant is locally minded, and
tied all his life to his one little patch of earth.
He has thought little of Russia as a whole. Pa-
triotism, as the French peasant knows it, is quite
foreign in Russia. It was as easy for the Rus-
sian peasant to accept the doctrine of interna-
tionalism as that of nationalism. The Bolshevist

346

TSARS AND PEASANTS

idea of a community Soviet, electing delegates to
a national Soviet, which could in turn elect dele-
gates to an international Soviet forming the
brotherhood of the peoples of all the world, ap-
pealed to his need for local self-government, and
gave him at the same time a large ideal. It took
little more effort to conceive oneself as belonging
to a world than it took to imagine oneself part of
an empire as vast as Russia.

Even the city workers have a strong pull back
to the soil. Many of them work in the factories
in the winter, and return to the villages to help
harvest the crops in summer. A friend of mine
asked an izvostchik where he came from.

"I am one of Count CherimesofFs peasants,"
he said.

"How long have you been in Petrograd?" my
friend questioned.

"Thirty-five years," he answered.

After thirty-five years he still thought of him-
self, not only as a peasant, but as the property
of a particular estate.

I once said to a peasant from the government
of Pskoff :

"Are you a Russian?"
347

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"No; we are Pskovians."

A hungry student, who went to Pskoff during
the holidays for the purpose of getting enough
to eat, visited the local Peasants' Council. The
business before the meeting had to do with a
drunken member. He had been drinking hunja,
av home-made substitute for vodka, and was cap-
tured with a bottle of it in his possession. The
council discussed his case, and wrote a paper to
send to the committee whose business it was to
handle such offenders. It takes much time to
write a paper at a peasants' meeting, and while
it was being compiled the bottle, which was to
have been offered as evidence, was emptied of its
contents. An investigation was made, and it
was found that one of the peasants had drunk
it. The council debated some minutes, then
wrote at the bottom of the paper:

"The hunja being taken by Stepanoff, he is
added to above-mentioned bottle and man, and
sent to the committee."

The local Peasants' Soviets were not always
as expeditious as an efficiency age might demand ;
but usually there was a crude, simple justice in
their decisions that was unknown in the days

348

TSARS AND PEASANTS

when their destinies were decided by the high-
handed officers of the Tsar.

Most of the land-owners insisted that the peas-
ant was at heart bourgeois, and that his interest
in revolution would cease as soon as he got his
land. Not long after the Bolshevik Revolution,
I talked one day with one of the former secre-
taries in the Foreign Office. He was managing
the strike of the employees of the various minis-
tries against the Soviet government, and ex-
plained an elaborate scheme by which he and his
associates expected to cut off the grain districts
of the south and starve the revolutionary masses
of the cities into submission.

"The Bolsheviki," he said, "are our real ene-
mies. We don't care about the theoretical So-
cialists— they just talk. But with the Bolsheviki
it is a fight to a finish, and of course in the long
run it can result only one way. When the sol-
dier peasant returns to his earth and his family,
he will become bourgeois. The peasant does not
want to own land, as the Socialists want it. He
wants his own private property. Eventually he
will be on our side."

Many of the revolutionists shared the same be-
349

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

lief about the peasants; but thus far they had
proved as Nicholas Tchaikovsky said — as radi-
cal as the city workers.

The greatest difficulty that each succeeding
government experienced was that of making
the peasants give up their grain. They wanted
plows, cotton for their looms, shoes for them-
selves and their children; and the rubles they
received had depreciated so greatly in value
that they had no purchasing power. The peas-
ants looked upon them as so many scraps of
worthless paper.

A Russian who had two estates down in the
south told me of an excursion that he made to
the government of Chernigoff in September.
He went there to try to induce the peasants to
sell their grain to the army.

"There was one village," said he, "where there
were two thousand inhabitants. It was in the
heart of the rich grain country. Since the pre-
vious December no official had been allowed to
enter the village. The people had isolated them-
selves from the rest of Russia, and officials re-
mained away under threat of being killed. I
went alone on horseback, with a rifle and some

350

TSARS AND PEASANTS

ammunition. As I neared the place I saw the
villagers coming out to meet me. I told them
they must give bread to the army, which was in
danger of starving at the front. I made what
I thought was a forcible plea. When I finished,
an old gray-haired peasant, who seemed to be
the spokesman of the crowd, said:

" 'That 's all very clever talk, but now listen to
what we have to say. You want our bread. You
offer to give us five rubles a pood (forty pounds) .
What is five rubles to us ? We want to buy shoes.
For shoes we must pay a hundred rubles. We
will keep our grain.'

" 'All right,' I answered. 'If you want to keep
your grain you can keep it; but you need petrol,
and sugar for your tea, and iron for your plows.
If you do not give us grain we will not give you
these.'

"The old peasant smiled and beckoned me to
follow him. He led me to a window where a
couple of crude pine torches cut from a near-by
wood had been placed.

" 'Those were the lights our grandfathers used,'
he said. 'They are good enough for us. You
can keep your petrol.'

351

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

" 'But sugar — you must have sugar for your
tea.'

" 'Our grandfathers needed no sugar for their
tea. They got along without tea, and they had
as much bread as we have/

" 'What about iron for your plows?' I asked.
Sure, here at any rate I had him stumped.

"He led me to a shed at the back of his house,
and showed me a small, primitive, old-fashioned
sochar plow, in use now only in the most back-
ward sections.

" 'Do you see that blade?' he asked. 'Our fa-
thers used those, and they had bread. There 's
enough steel on the old plows in the village to
make new plows to last four years. You can
keep your petrol and your sugar and your iron,'
he said triumphantly.

" 'You know,' I said, playing my trump card,
'we can bring troops down here and force you to
give up your grain for the good of your coun-
try.'

" 'Yes, of course,' he said. 'We are only two
thousand, and if you brought a whole regiment
you could beat us. But we will recall our own
peasants from the front, and when they come, do

I nder the thatched roofs in villages like this one hundred and twenty million
Russian peasants make their home

Katherine Breshkovskaya and her two aged comrades, Lazareff (center) and
Nicholas Tchaikowsky, with her American friends, Col. William B. Thompson
(lower left) and Col. Raymond Robins

Soldiers' wives on the Nevsky demonstrating for increased allowance

TSARS AND PEASANTS

you suppose they will fight for you? No, they
will fight for us.'

"It was no use — all threats had failed. I tried
persuasion.

' 'But please, please/ I said. 'Your brothers
are starving — please give us some grain for the
army.'

'Yes,' he said; 'we will give you bread. We
will give you two thousand poods of bread for
our brothers at the front.'

" 'We will be glad to pay you — ' I began.

"He interrupted.

' 'No,' he said; 'it is a present — we will not
sell you bread. We have no use for your rubles.
They are scraps of paper.' '

The same official told me that he had visited
the village of Radouel, and found the people
without bread, while two kilometers away the
peasants were feeding bread to the pigs and sell-
ing the pigs for lard.

"Why should we sell bread for five rubles a
pood, when we can get a hundred and twenty
rubles a pood for pork fat?" the peasants asked.

Price-fixing on grain in Russia had no good
results. The peasant who could neither read nor

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

write knew enough to realize that money is paper
when its purchasing power is gone. Unless it
could be transmuted into farm implements, it was
of less value to him than his grain.

The dream of the Soviets was communally
owned modern farm machinery that would lift
Russian agriculture out of its primitive state and
lessen the dreary drudgery of the peasant's des-
perate struggle for life.

No one who has not seen those peasant homes
can know the sordidness of that struggle. Often
the live stock, which was the peasants' entire for-
tune, shared the same roof with the family. In
one peasant hut I found the cow occupying the
most comfortable corner of the room. I picked
my way to the door through a barn-yard full of
oozing black mud and refuse. A flock of chick-
ens ran in and out, leaving the marks of their feet
on the floor; and the barefoot peasant's wife,
on her frequent excursions to and fro, tracked
the vile-smelling slush in with her. Plumbing
there was none. Except in the big cities, there
is none worthy of the name in Russia. The peas-
ant's weekly steam bath is his one debauch of
cleanliness.

354

TSARS AND PEASANTS

Every village has its public bath. In the more
primitive ones, a fire is built in a Russian stove.
When the stones are thoroughly heated, tubs of
water are thrown over them, and the steam pours
forth. The bathers, after a good scrubbing,
climb up on the wooden shelves that are built in
tiers along the walls, and enjoy a thorough
steaming. The fires are kept burning, and occa-
sionally one of the bathers throws a fresh dipper
of water on the stones.

The samovar was frequently the one luxury.
In the days before the vodka prohibition, the
white liquor was the peasant's only escape from
the sordidness of life. It was a poor escape, be-
cause it meant that his wife and children paid
with greater misery for his momentary relief.
The unhappy peasant, harassed by political and
economic oppression, did what miserable people
do the world over — tried to make some one else
miserable. Usually the peasant took it out on
his wife, who in turn took it out on the children.
Given the least opportunity, the Russian is the
kindest, simplest, happiest soul in the world. Il-
literate as he is, he frequently reveals a deeper
wisdom than his more fortunate brothers over-

355

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

seas. We can teach him plumbing and tilling
and business management. We can help him to
a knowledge of things that grow between the
covers of books. But we can learn from him
also — those truths that are minted in misery, those
truths that come out of the depths of the forest
and off the vast silent spaces of the steppe, into
the soul of a man.

356

CHAPTER XIX

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

THERE was no feminist movement in Russia.

People usually become class-conscious in re-
sponse to class oppression. In the old days in
Russia the rights of women were slightly fewer
than those of men, but the difference was so small
as to be negligible. Their separate grievance as
a class was swallowed up in the greater griev-
ance of the mass. Russia's struggle was the
struggle of human beings as human beings, rather
than human beings as males or females.

In the days of the terrorists, women claimed
the right to throw bombs as well as men. It was
granted them. With equal generosity, the gov-
ernment rewarded them with hard labor, exile in
Siberia, and even hanging. They spent their
strength and their blood as lavishly, as recklessly,
as courageously, as any of their brother Nihilists.

When freedom came to Russia, no one ques-
tioned the right of women to share it. Instead

857

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of becoming feminists, they became Cadets, So-
cial Revolutionists, Mensheviki, Maximalists,
Bolsheviki, Internationalists, or attached them-
selves to one or another of the parties and shad-
ows of parties.

Here, as elsewhere, governmental honors were
largely to the male ; but the mundane business of
making the world of meat and drink was largely
left to women. Women in Russia do what
women of the Western world do. At the big
democratic convention in the Alexandrinski
Theater, I counted the number of seats occupied
by women. There were sixteen hundred dele-
gates, and twenty-three of them were women.
Many other women were in evidence, but they
were behind the samovars, serving tea and caviar
and sausage sandwiches. Some wore red arm-
bands, ushered the men to their seats, took steno-
graphic reports of proceedings, and counted bal-
lots. It was so natural that it almost made me
homesick.

Revolution did not lessen the burden that war
had placed upon the back of the mass of Russian
women. Increased disorganization of the coun-
try necessitated increased effort on the part of

358

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

women to keep their families from starvation.
They tilled the fields and tended the cattle; they
swept the streets and mended the railway tracks,
and stood for endless hours in front of the food-
shops to get bread and milk for their babies.
Their hopes were invested in the success of the
Revolution just as firmly as those of their men,
but they had less time for talking. They poured
out of the factories to march, and once they were
prepared even to fight. They were the silent
heroines of revolution, as they had been of war;
and, though they had much cause, they had little
time for weeping.

Only five women climbed out of the mass to
high seats of honor. They were Katherine
Breshkovskaya, Marie Spiridonova, Countess
Panina, Alexandria Kolontai, and Madame Bit-
senko.

The age has produced no finer spirit in any
land than that of the wonderful old Babushka
(Grandmother) of the Revolution. The heights
of joy and the depths of disappointment have
been hers during the year; but she has remained,
in spite of everything, the big, strong, steady
soul who survived half a century and more of per-

359

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

secution that Russia might be free. Her long
revolutionary life has been filled with every con-
ceivable kind of suffering, but she never for a
moment lost faith in the ultimate success of the
cause to which she dedicated herself.

When the Revolution came, she was in exile in
Siberia, and they brought her home and gave
her a reception such as no queen has ever known.
They took her protesting to the Winter Palace,
and installed her there. She insisted on the tini-
est little room to be found in the great building,
and asked to be allowed to live in the simplicity
she had always known. Her door swung always
on a friendly hinge, and it was in this room, sit-
ting behind a big flat-topped mahogany desk,
that I first met her. She was seventy-three years
old; but by the light in her eyes, the ring in her
voice, and the courage in her soul, she appeared
to me to be the youngest, the strongest, and per-
haps the sanest person I had found in Petrograd.

An odd procession tramped up and down the
marble staircase to place its hopes and fears in
the crucible of her wise old head and her stout,
kind old heart. Once I found her with a com-
rade of the old Siberian days, who came to her

360

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

to mend his broken dream. He had fought and
suffered for free Russia, and returned to find
himself exiled anew to that saddest of all exiles.
The young radicals spoke of him as "an old fogy,"
and said, with a meaningful smile, of the man who
had clanged his chains across the prison floor
through many dreary years: "He calls himself
a Socialist." He came to the Babushka for a
new faith in himself and tolerance of his accusers.
She nodded, put a pair of motherly arms around
him, and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Babushka knows. Have they not said that
she was all very well for her day, but her day
is done?"

When he had gone, she turned to me with a
tiny sigh.

"It is a friend of mine," she said — "a man who
was twenty years in prison. Yet he is strong,
but men — I think they are not so strong as
women. I think they can not suffer so much.
They have not such stout hearts. They get dis-
couraged."

Once a messenger from Kerensky interrupted
us with news of a mutiny in one of the regi-
ments.

361

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"I must go immediately," she said, "and talk
to these naughty boys who have been listening
again to bad advice."

Another time an invitation from the American
Red Cross came.

"Of course I will go to my dear Americans,"
she said, "and spend the whole afternoon if they
want me."

We had no better friend in all of Russia. She
loved America and Americans, and never tired
of talking of her experiences in our country.
She asked about Jane Addams, and Alice Stone
Blackwell, Ernest Poole, and Arthur Bullard.

"They were all so good to me," she said.
"While I was in Siberia they sent me papers
and letters. Not once did they forget me. That
is how I learned to speak the English. I do not
speak it very well."

I asked what America could do to help Rus-
sia.

"Never let us alone," she answered. "We
need you. All that you do now, do more. We
need you much. Our dangers are from our-
selves only. Our interior construction is very
difficult. When the war is over, our hands will

362

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

be quite free. But that is difficult too, for our
soldiers are tired, and very, very dark. They
do not understand the danger to Russia. The
country is large, rich — very rich, but not enough
civilize-ed," she said. "We need aid — we need
teachers. How to do it — that is the question."

We talked of Russian women.

"They are very good, our women. But they
are not active enough; they are not energetic,"
she said. "Before it was always waiting — what
will be permitted. We had no liberty to act by
ourselves. Now, when we have liberty, we have
not the experience. I can work because I fear
nothing. I fear-ed nothing all my life. I have
always worked. The initiative is a great thing.
You have much of it, but the Russian women —
the instinct and the moral forces are all right,
but there is not the will to do."

Every big and little problem of Russia lay
heavily on the grandmother's heart; but she re-
fused to permit her vision of the future to be
blurred by the tragedies of the present. From
the days of her childhood as the daughter of a
wealthy land-owner, through solitary confinement
in the dungeon of the Fortress of Peter and

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Paul, and dreary years of hard labor on the
Siberian steppes, her life has always been touched
with consciousness of the sorrow of others.

"When I look back upon my past life, I can
not remember a time when my child soul did not
suffer at the contradiction between reality and
the teachings of Christ," she said. "As a tiny
girl of five, my heart was always breaking for
some one else. Now it was for the driver, now
for the chamber-maid, now for the laborer.
Sometimes it was those poor oppressed serfs.
Always I have known that I would go safely
through everything and see the bright days of
freedom. Always I was listening for the ring-
ing of the bells, and wondering that they kept
me waiting."

At the opening meeting of the Council of the
Republic, I saw Kerensky place the gavel in her
hands and ask her to be the first presiding officer.
It was as gracious and beautiful a tribute as has
ever been paid to woman anywhere; and the old
grandmother, a white kerchief over her snowy
curls and another around her neck, graced her
position.

364

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

I saw Babushka for the last time just before
the fall of the Kerensky government. Imme-
diately afterward she went into retirement.
Stories of her arrest were spread broadcast over
the world, but they were not true. The young
revolutionists, though they differed from her po-
litically, had far too profound a feeling of respect
for her down in their hearts to harm her. She
lived quietly in Petrograd for a time, on the
fifth floor of an apartment-house. Later she
went to Moscow.

I left Russia without seeing Babushka, but I
learned that she was safe, and I knew that, in
spite of disappointments, she was adjusting her-
self to the changed conditions and holding the
faith that her country can not be permanently
enslaved by a kaiser any more than it could be
by a tsar.

Except for their courage and their revolu-
tionary faith, no two women could be much more
unlike than Breshkovskaya and little Marie Spi-
ridonova.

If the annals of the Bolshevist government are
truly written, they will record many a night when
Marie Spiridonova and Nicolai Lenin matched

365

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

wits and followers in the great game of revolu-
tionary politics. Less than five feet tall and
considerably under ninety pounds, she was the
smallest and frailest but one of the most power-
ful persons in that vast country — the Little Gen-
eral of peasant Russia.

I see her always as I saw her many times dur-
ing this great red Russian year — against a back-
ground of masses upon masses of burly figures
in dun-colored coats, her tiny hands waving fran-
tically in the air while she shouted, with all the
force and fire of a spirit of flame :

"Tavarischi! Tavarischi! Tiche, tiche!"
(Comrades! Comrades! Hush, hush!)

She rattled a futile little bell occasionally; but,
in the midst of that clatter of dumb men who had
suddenly found their tongues, its voice was like
the bleat of a lamb.

She was as incongruous in those great crowds
of hairy, horny sons of field and trench as the
tinkling bell; yet she handled herself and her
followers with the skill of a trained politician
and the tact of a mother.

By all the laws of human limitations, she
should be dead. She was sentenced to death by

366

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

the order of the Tsar's government, when she was
a girl only just barely awakened to a knowledge
of the tragedy of life in her native Russia.

In her first twenty-four hours in prison she
died a hundred deaths at the hands of the Cos-
sack officers charged with the pleasant duty of
torturing her. Still she lived on, and her tor-
mentors paid quietly, swiftly, and unofficially
with their lives for what they had done to her.
Marie Spiridonova's companions had sworn that
it should be so, and it was.

During ten years at hard labor in Siberia,
death should have come to relieve her, but it did
not.

When the news that Russia was free flashed
across the steppes and into the vast white si-
lences of northeastern Siberia, it found Marie
Spiridonova alive and waiting.

Two bright red spots flamed on her thin
cheek-bones, and her narrow chest was racked
by a wicked cough. They brought her home to
Petrograd and put her tenderly to bed in a
refuge prepared for home-coming exiles — put
her to bed to die.

Through the turbulent spring and summer she
367

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

played her part in revolution from that narrow
refugee cot. By fall she had become the central
figure at every meeting of the peasants' delegates,
who were pouring ceaselessly into Petrograd from
all parts of Russia.

Her story begins thirty years ago, in the gov-
ernment of Tamboof. There, in a little house
not far from the prison where she was afterward
incarcerated, Marie lived with her mother and
two sisters. She received unusual educational
advantages, and planned to be a doctor; but as
she grew older she became so engrossed in the
sorrows of the Russian people that she gave up
all thought of everything but revolution.

Tamboof was in the grip of a governor no-
torious even beyond the borders of his gubernia
for his frightful cruelties. The peasants lived
in hourly terror that he would set the Cossacks
on them, order them flogged, or, worse still, burn
their homes.

The stories of his cruelties mounted one upon
the other; and to Marie Spiridonova, brooding
over them, it seemed that she and this man could
no longer breathe the air of the same earth.

They both chanced to be in a certain small vil-
368

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

lage when a peasant girl was captured, submit-
ted to frightful outrage by a band of Cossacks,
and finally thrown into a lake.

The governor knew. He neither hindered nor
punished. It was too much. There was one
pair of violet eyes in the village that night that
did not close. Marie Spiridonova lay awake un-
til morning, and by morning she knew what she
must do. She obtained a revolver. She found
the governor of Tamboof at the railway station,
with his Cossack guard. She fired five fatal
shots before the Cossacks, with drawn swords,
closed in on her. She saw them coming, and
tried to take her own life, but they were too quick.
They hurled her to the sidewalk, calling to each
other to "Strike her! Slash her!" They
dragged her down the steps, her head bumping
as she went, and lifted her by her long brown
braids into an izvostchik.

In the jail she was stripped and flogged end
taunted with shouts of "Now, then, deliver us a
thrilling speech!" They burned her body with
lighted cigarettes, and stamped on her little feet
with their heavy boots. When other forms of
torture bored them, they kicked her back and

369

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

forth across the cell from one to another like a
football, shouting: "Now, then, tell us who your
comrades are!" or, "Cry out then, you wretch,
if you don't like it!"

Marie Spiridonova did not cry out. She de-
livered no thrilling speeches. She spoke no com-
rade's name. That is not the stuff of which the
Russian Revolution was made.

The next night they took her back to Tam-
boof. Much of the time she was mercifully
senseless, and remembers vaguely as a series of
horrible nightmares her brief intervals of con-
sciousness. They tried her, and sentenced her
to death, and when they asked her on the day of
judgment if she had anything to say Jor herself,
she replied:

"I am about to be sent from this life. You
may kill me over and over again, as you have
already done. You may subject me to the most
horrible penalties. But you can add nothing to
what I have already endured. I do not fear
death. You may kill my body, but you can not
destroy my belief that the hour of the people's
freedom and happiness is coming."

The story of Marie Spiridonova rang from one
370

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

part of the world to the other. It made little
difference what the governor or the Tsar did to
her, for in that hour the Russian people en-
throned her in their hearts. Her youth, the
depth of her passion, her tiny, frail, girlish form,
—even her name itself, — became a pledge-
word by which men swore that Russia should
be free.

In France they formed a league to save her,
and England and America were quickly aroused
to pity and to action. Perhaps because of the
storm of protest at home and abroad, the death
sentence was commuted to hard labor in Si-
beria. Marie Spiridonova asked no mercy for
herself. She rejected personal pity.

"If the people of America are interested in
the fate of this Russian girl, tell them they must
rather interest themselves in the fatherland of
this girl," she said. "I want nothing personally,
because for a long time I have not existed per-
sonally. My heart and my soul are given to the
cause of the people."

It is so with all the Russian revolutionists.
Theirs is a movement of ideas rather than of in-
dividuals. They shrink from discussing them-

371

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

selves as individuals, and prefer always to dwell
upon the cause for which they fight.

In spite of this, the life of a revolutionist goes
on in much the same channels as that of other
people. They have their personal joys and sor-
rows, their great loves and little hates, their hap-
piness and their own small individual heart-
breaks. Marie Spiridonova was no exception to
this rule. While she was in exile she met Alex-
ander Dekonsky, a revolutionist from south Rus-
sia. He was young like herself, and apparently
as full of revolutionary fire. They had their
cause in common, and youth and life and loneli-
ness. They fell in love.

In the prison where Marie Spiridonova was
incarcerated there were nine other women po-
liticals. When the news came that Russia was
free, the order of release contained the names of
only eight of them. The jailer read them slowly,
and the women looked from one to another with
faces of joyful unbelief. The impossible was a
fact. The thing for which they had dreamed
and worked and suffered, and for which many
of their comrades had already died, had hap-
pened. The jailer came to the end of the list.

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

Two sharp streaks of pain appeared in the eyes
of the two neglected ones. With trembling lips
they spoke.

"What about us?" they asked forlornly.

The jailer shook his head. He was going to
take no chances. The Revolution might not be
such a success as it appeared. He would wait
for other advices.

"You stay/' he answered.

"Then none of us will go!" said Marie Spi-
ridonova, with one of those impulsive decisions
characteristic of her.

They settled back to more waiting; but the
prison walls that day could not keep down their
bounding spirits or shadow their joy.

The next day a second telegram arrived, or-
dering the release of the two neglected ones, and
the ten started joyfully on their pilgrimage to
Petrograd.

Their journey was a triumphal procession
through the length of Siberia. No other but Ba-
bushka received such a welcome as that which
the people gave to this slip of a girl who had won
the distinction of being the most famous and
most loved of all the "Terrorists" of Russia.

373

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

She needed all the love and sympathy that Rus-
sia could give her, for she was soon to bear a
greater torture than any that gendarmes or Cos-
sack officers had been able to invent for her.

When the records of the Okhranka (the secret
police) were captured, they contained the names
of the spies and provokators who for years had
been masquerading as revolutionists only that
they might betray their comrades to the agents
of the Tsar. The name of Alexander Dekonsky
was on the list. According to the records, there
was documentary evidence to prove that he was
the chief provokator of all the great South Rus-
sian district, and that many revolutionists had
paid with their lives on the gallows for their
faith and friendship for him. Marie Spirido-
nova was sick in bed when they told her the news.
Dekonsky had been arrested by the Soviet of
Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies at Odessa,
and was imprisoned there.

Once again death crept close to the frail form
of Marie Spiridonova, and once again death re-
fused to release her. She lived through this as
she lived through other tragedies. For three
weeks she hid herself away from all her old

374*

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

friends. During this time Dekonsky escaped
from prison. Many Russians believe that he was
released by his guards at the request of his sweet-
heart of Siberian days. When Marie Spirido-
nova once more appeared in Petrograd, she gave
out a public statement in which she declared De-
konsky innocent; then she threw herself more
intensely than ever into the Revolutionary strug-
gle.

I met her first at the Democratic Convention
in the Alexandrinsky Theater. She sat in the
front row, surrounded, as always, by men whose
huge bulk emphasized her smallness. Her hair
was done in two braids, wrapped around her face,
and pulled rather low on her forehead to hide
the scars the Cossack officers had left there. She
wore, as always, a severe blue serge dress with
a turnover collar of white lawn, and the severity
of her clothes accentuated the Quaker look of her.
The red spots burned brighter than ever on her
cheek-bones that night, and her violet eyes were
like tiny candles set in deep shadows. She was
the spokesman of her party, the radical wing
of the Social Revolutionists, and occasionally
she walked to the platform and delivered a brief

375

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

but intense appeal on behalf of her group.

The political situation was critical. Kerensky
was already balancing on a tight-rope. The cry
of "All Power to the Soviets," was growing
louder and more insistent. Marie Spiridonova,
though she was not a Bolshevik, inclined toward
the Bolshevist program. She knew that the
land-hunger of the peasants could not long go
unsatisfied, and that no government that did not
recognize this immediate demand could possibly
survive. To those of us who believed that the
wisest policy for Russia was to stand by Alex-
ander Kerensky, the intense little bundle of en-
thusiasms that was Marie Spiridonova seemed a
real fire-brand.

In the tea-room where, in intermissions, we
worshiped at the shrine of the bubbling samovar,
or lined up at the counters for black bread
and butter sandwiches, I had the first of many
talks with her. She seemed pathetically frail
and exhausted, and told me that she was sleep-
ing only about two hours a night. All day long,
in and out of convention, the peasants came flock-
ing to see her, and would talk to no one else.
When she was n't in convention, or party caucus,

376

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

or meeting delegations from the front and the
villages, she was editing a newspaper for distri-
bution among the peasants.

When the November Revolution overthrew the
coalition government and placed the Bolsheviki
in power, it was the voice of Marie Spiridonova
more than any other that brought about the com-
bination of the left Social Revolutionists and the
Bolsheviki.

She argued that to stay aloof from the govern-
ment of the People's Commissaries was to put
oneself, in effect, on the side of the counter-revo-
lutionists. She was offered a place in the Cab-
inet, but refused, believing she could do better
work simply as a leader of the peasants. Many
times in the year I have seen her and Chernoff
contest for the control of the bearded men in the
faded brown coats, and in the end little Marie
Spiridonova always came away with the honors.

The first woman to accept a place in the Cab-
inet was Countess Panina, who became Assistant
Minister of Public Welfare in one of the early
Kerensky governments, and was later transferred
to the Department of Education. Countess Pa-
nina was perhaps the best representative of a

377

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

small group of big- spirited, high-thinking women
of the aristocracy who were in protest against
the oppression of the Tsar. She was a rebel in
the days of autocracy, but the ever-increasing
radicalism of the revolutionists made her seem
more and more the conservative as the months
went on. She did a big job as well as the facili-
ties permitted, until her arrest following the
downfall of Kerensky.

Her successor was Alexandria Kolontai, the
Bolshevik. I had imagined Kolontai as a large
woman with short black hair and a defiant man-
ner— a picture conjured unconsciously from all
the wild stories about her that were afloat. In-
stead, she was a mild-looking little person, with
large soft blue eyes, and wavy brown hair tinged
with gray, caught in a simple knot behind her
head. She had been arrested following the July
riots, when an effort was made to prove Lenin
and Trotzky pro-German; but she was released
because of lack of evidence to hold her.

I met her first at Smolney Institute, immedi-
ately after the Soviet had taken over the govern-
ment. The Bolsheviki were trying to form the

378

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

first Council of the People's Commissaries. Ko-
lontai had beon mentioned as Commissary of
Welfare. A friend introduced me to her, and
we had tea together. She proved to be a simple,
cultured, gracious person, and the author of an
extensive and authoritative volume on the subject
of maternity compensation.

"Are you going to be a minister?" I asked her.

"No, indeed," she answered, with a laugh.
"If I were to be a minister, I should become as
stupid as all ministers."

Notwithstanding her denial, she was installed
a few days later in the Ministry of Welfare.
Several months afterwards I went to see her, to
ask about facilities for the distribution of the
condensed milk that the Red Cross had just re-
ceived from America. I wickedly reminded her
of that other day.

"And I am getting stupid," she said. "But
what are we to do? There are so few of us to
do the work."

Kolontai was a product of the upper class.
She was married to a Russian engineer, and, ac-
cording to the story she told me, had never even

379

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

thought of social conditions until 1889, when she
went with her husband to spend a week in a fac-
tory town.

"I was given permission to spend my days
in the factory, and it made such a profound im-
pression on me that it changed my whole life.
I went away feeling I could not live unless I
did something to help change the condition of the
Russian workers. I knew no Socialists, but I
began to read, and found my way to Socialism
through books. Later I went to Zurich and
took a course in economics, became a revolution-
ist, and spent nine years in exile."

Kolontai shares the general Bolshevist feeling
of the hopelessness of their cause, but she said:

"Even if we are conquered, we have done great
things. We are breaking the way, abolishing
old ideas. The creative work of lifting the cul-
ture of the world will come first to other coun-
tries."

She changed the name of the Ministry from
Social Welfare to Social Security, to make it
more in keeping with the Soviet idea of benefits
as a right rather than a gift. The revenue for
the department was raised largely by a monopoly

380

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

on playing cards. They were sold at thirty ru-
bles a dozen. Kolontai, on the theory that cards
were not a necessity of life and therefore should
be heavily taxed, raised the price to three hun-
dred and sixty roubles a dozen. The purchasers
complained, but ordered as many as three hun-
dred to five hundred decks.

When Kolontai took charge, the officials went
on a strike and took the key from the treasury.
For two weeks the whereabouts of the key re-
mained a mystery. Then Kolontai sent for a
band of Red Guard and sailors, and her order,
backed by their bayonets, was obeyed.

She reorganized the department from below,
but installed democratic management, giving
every employee a vote. There were four thou-
sand minor employees drawing very miserable
salaries, while a few figureheads received as
much as twenty-five thousand rubles a year.
She readjusted the scale so that six hundred
rubles a month became the highest salary paid
any one.

There are two and a half million maimed sol-
diers in Russia, and in January there were four
million others who were sick or wounded. These,

381

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

and nearly a half a million dependent children,
came under the care of the department.

Russia's infant mortality rate is the highest of
any so-called civilized country. Kolontai, in an
effort to correct this, opened a Palace of Mother-
hood, with a maternity exhibition and training
classes to prepare a mother for the coming of
her child. She planned this as a model for sim-
ilar houses to be established all over Russia. It
was arranged that mothers could come there for
eight weeks prior to the birth of the child, and
remain for eight weeks afterward, while substi-
tute mothers went into the homes to take care of
the other children.

Several measures were passed by the Council
of People's Commissaries to protect maternity,
and these were under the jurisdiction of Kolan-
tai's department. The work-day for nursing
mothers was reduced to four hours, and a com-
pulsory rest period before and after the birth
of the child was established.

"Little republics" were established in all the
homes for older children and for the aged,
and self-government was introduced. The social

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

program included an adequate scale of compen-
sation for the disabled victims of the war, many of
whom were forced to beg on the streets. This
entailed a tremendous expenditure, and I asked
Madame Kolontai how it would be possible to
raise so much money.

"We found money for war," she answered.
"We shall find money for this."

She asserted that graft in the department
reached into millions of rubles, and that the elimi-
nation of this alone would go far toward realizing
some of her schemes. She proposed also requi-
sitioning the monasteries and convents, which
were the repositories of untold wealth in lands
and jewels, and turning them into children's
homes and asylums.

Madame Bitsenko, the fifth member of the
group, was the only woman on the peace delega-
tion to Brest-Litovsk. The peace delegation had
been gone from Petrograd several days before I
even learned there was a woman among the en-
voys. Daddy R. spoke of her quite casually one
morning.

"What, a woman on the peace board!" I said
383

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

in amazement. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I did n't think
anything of it."

It was rather typical of the Russian attitude.
It didn't occur to any one to be surprised to
find a woman in a position of power. There
was no more sex-consciousness on the part of the
men than on the part of the women.

A few other women were flashed upon the revo-
lutionary screen, in one capacity or another.
Vera Figner did a notable piece of work for the
home-coming exiles. Madame Sheskina Javien's
name was associated with the suffrage fight, and
there were several women doctors who played
an unspectacular but very necessary role.

Russian women are handicapped, like Russian
men, by lack of experience. Up to the time of
the Revolution, women were allowed to study
law, but not to practise it. Many women stud-
ied law for the sheer joy of putting their brains
to work on solid food; but when they had digested
the theory, there was no practice upon which to
test it. Well rounded human beings are devel-
oped in combined thought and action. The in-
telligent Russian woman has a larger fund of

384

WOMEN IN THE REVOLUTION

general cultural knowledge than the average edu-
cated American, but she has been denied the op-
portunity for applying her knowledge as she ac-
quires it.

Russian women talk brilliantly upon many
subjects, but most of them jump quickly about
from one subject to another, and frequently,
after an hour of conversation with one, I found
myself groping frantically about, trying to re-
duce what had been said to a few simple facts
capable of application.

385

CHAPTER XX

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

NICHOLAS and two able-bodied as-
sistants could have conducted a successful coun-
ter-revolution on December 25, 1917. But the
Tsar, whatever else may be said of him, was a
Russian, so he was otherwise engaged.

On a holiday no Russian, high or low, orthodox,
old believer or unbeliever, Jew or Gentile, has
time for anything but f)lay. The Russian cal-
endar, lagging nearly two weeks behind the
schedule of western Europe, provided the for-
eigners with a double portion of festivity. In
the midst of war and revolution, we not only
celebrated Christmas, but we celebrated it twice.

To my sunshine-fed California soul, that
Christmas stepped ready-made from a fairy tale.
The lazy lie-abed sun does n't get up until nearly
noon, and before the afternoon is half gone it
has brushed the snow with streaks of coral and

386

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

rose, and departed, leaving a glowing memory
painted upon the horizon.

Petrograd, before she puts on her white cloak
of winter, is just a bit shabby. The red and yel-
low stucco palaces could do with a new coat of
paint. Here and there the plaster is badly in
need of patching, and the ornate scroll-saw ruf-
fles around the buildings are pathetically like
cheap lace. When the beauty of winter comes
toppling out of the heavens, she stretches her arms
and catches it all. The snow piles in billows on
roofs and chimneys, and the icicles hang like
crystal fringes from the woodwork. Against
the background of the white snow, the faded yel-
lows and the bricky reds become warm and glow-
ing. The little trees in the palace courtyards,
stripped of leaves and clothed in swan's feathers,
are like ghosts or shadows of trees, so vague and
frail they are.

Christmas against such a background must
have elements of beauty, however empty the
shops or troubled the people. Vera and Ivan
take their play-time seriously. Because they
wept yesterday and die to-morrow, they play the
more lustily to-day. Though revolution raged,

387

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

machine-guns rattled, and cabinets fell, the ballet
pursued its uninterrupted course to the end of the
season. At the Marinsky Theater, Karsavina
and Smirnova fought to hold the honors of the
dance against all new comers, and Shalyapin sang
the parts that made him famous in the days of
Nicholas with all his accustomed gusto. When
the proper time arrived, the winter slides for the
children were put in their usual places in the
parks, and until the snows came the "American
mountain" (roller-coaster) in the Russian
Coney Island had done a record-smashing busi-
ness.

Of course they would celebrate Christmas —
revolution or no revolution! It never occurred
to any one that it might be otherwise.

As the date of our holiday drew near, my Rus-
sian friends plied me with questions. To the
chef of the Hotel Europe, an American mince
pie was a riddle without an answer. The Red
Cross Mission gave a luncheon for the American
correspondents Christmas Day, and Major Al-
len Wardwell and I were commissioned to go
shopping. Colonel Robins suggested turkey,
mince pie, and a Christmas tree as desirable trim-

388

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

mings, and we had great fun and many adven^
tures achieving them.

The luncheon table was set in a large, high-
ceilinged room with red velvet hangings. A
crackling fire blazed on the hearth, and in the
center of the table a gleaming tree stepped from
a mossy bed of crimson tulips. We pulled down
the blinds and shut out war and revolution, while
we laughed merrily over the Russian conception
of mince pie, and wondered secretly, each in his
own terms, what they were doing off there across
the world at home.

Major Thatcher and Major Webster had the
bad judgment to choose that day upon which to
go to bed with colds, so we had a second celebra-
tion in their rooms. On the way back to the
hotel, I stopped at the old police station to leave
a book and a "Merry Christmas" for Jacob Pe-
ters.

"It 's a Christmas box," he said, a wistful smile
lighting his tired face. He was weary and dis-
illusioned and hungry for an open fireplace, his
little girl, and his British "missis." "There is
nothing in the world like an English Christmas,"
he said.

389

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

We talked for a few minutes, then I hurried
back to the hotel to dress. In the National City
Bank Building, that night, the whole American
colony came out to celebrate Christmas. That
party was a triumph, taxing all the ingenuity of
a clever woman and half a dozen resourceful
men. It was a supper dance, and the miracle
of providing food for two hundred people with
Petrograd's cupboard stripped almost bare was
a real achievement. The presiding genius was
Mrs. Mildred Farwell, an American who quietly
did any number of nice things not only for, the
Americans, but for many poor stranded Russians
whose lives had unfitted them to meet the topsy-
turvy order.

All Russia contributed to load the buffet with
eatables of the "kind that mother used to make,"
and many a Russian cook was a wiser person be-
fore the party was over. They brought baking
powder from Vladivostok, six thousand versts
away, to make American layer cakes. The eggs
came from Pskoff, up near the Russian front.
The Ambassador's pantry was robbed of its white
flour. And the turkeys came from heaven knows
where.

390

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

In the days before the war the National City
Bank Building was the Turkish Embassy, and
for a night it took on all its former glory. The
huge mirrors reflected a whirling company of
women in shimmering frocks and men whose eve-
ning clothes had not been out of their creases for
many a day. There was a balalika band, and
between one-steps and waltzes couples chattered
in palm-secluded corners. Not a speech was
made that night. Mrs. Farwell was determined
that we should play, and play we did.

December 25 on the Russian calendar fell on
Monday. Sunday morning I crossed the Neva
with a friend, and drove to the quiet woods out
on the islands. It was a favorite haunt of mine ;
for here winter, whose mysteries I was discover-
ing for the first time, was at its best. The bough-
bent pines and spruces groaned beneath the white
weight upon their outstretched arms, and the de-
serted forests were big, silent, and untroubled.

To-day the woods came marching toward me.
Along the sidewalk a procession of shabby men
and worn-looking women hurried homeward, and
over the shoulder of each was a tiny tree. In
the forest we found the scars — lovely pines

391

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

clipped off at the top, baby spruces cut off at
the roots, familiar families broken up.

"It 's a shame," said my companion warmly.
"It 's vandalism, nothing else."

At first I too could see only the scars there in
the great whiteness. Then it was night, and
through the windows of Petrograd I saw the
trees. They were candle-lighted, and the shin-
ing eyes of little children looked upon them with
delight.

"It 's the price," I said. "A different destiny,
but who knows — perhaps a happier one. Per-
haps it is better to make the gift of a glorious
hour, to find immortality in the memory of a
child, than to live on to a green old age."

"Perhaps," he said.

That afternoon, along the Sadovaya, where
peasant women and crippled soldiers sold her-
rings and candles, apples and sausages, crude
toys and painted cradles, sugarless candy and
ugly dolls, I found the mothers of Petrograd pa-
thetically trying to contribute to that hour.
They paid thirty rubles a dozen for tiny apples,
and twelve rubles a pound for candy. It was a

392

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

lean Christmas, but it was Christmas neverthe-
less. The world stopped for three days; war,
revolution, hunger, mattered not. All of them
must make way for Christmas. The restaurants
and the hotel dining-rooms were closed, and, un-
less we had taken the precaution to lay in a sup-
ply of sardines beforehand, or had friends with
a farther vision than our own, we might have gone
hungry.

At midnight Christmas Eve I crossed the
square to St. Isaac's for the Christmas service.
The church was deserted. I stood alone in the
dark under the towering columns, waiting; but
nobody came. Back in the hotel, I discovered
that the service was to be at four in the morning.
At four, with some friends, I returned. This
time the church was lighted, and the priests were
there in their gold robes. There was a table
where communion bread and candles were for
sale. We bought the bread and the candles, and
listened while the rich, deep voices of the priests
sang the holiday mass. In other days that
church had been packed. This morning it was
practically empty. A few servant girls, a few

393

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

soldiers, here and there a tired mother with four
or five children — that was all. They were cele-
brating, but not in the cathedrals.

We went back to the hotel to make tea and to
fight the battles of the world — religion, econom-
ics, wars, and all the rest of it — until seven
o'clock. At the Europe that night we relit the
tree, and sat around the fire, talking of home.

During the holiday week all of Petrograd went
to the ballet, or the opera, or some other place
of amusement within its means. There were
morning matinees and afternoon matinees and
festival performances of all sorts.

One afternoon we had a box at the Marinsky
Theater. The ballet was "The Hunchback
Horse." The old Russian fairy tale, in its won-
derful Bakst setting, was done as it is done in
Petrograd and nowhere else. Another night it
was a festival performance of Glinka's opera,
"Russian and Ludmilla," celebrating the seventy-
fifth anniversary of its initial production. Shal-
yapin sang, and there was a gorgeous ballet with
costumes that must have come from the treasure-
chests of ancient nobles.

Another afternoon I was going with Edgar
394

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

Sisson, Arthur Bullard, and some other Ameri-
cans to hear "Boris Gudonof ." I arrived at the
theater, and found myself sole occupant of the
box. I sat there, wondering what had happened
to every one else and turning possible revolutions
over in my mind, when a messenger arrived with
word that a message from President Wilson was
coming over the wires.

It was the thing for which we in Petrograd
had hoped above everything else in the world.
Russia in that hour seemed utterly alone. She
had been pleading with the other powers to state
their war aims and to come to a peace conference,
but they had remained silent. At last America
was speaking. The message came in fragments,
a bit here and a bit there. It was two days be-
fore we had the full text ; but we knew from the
first paragraph that President Wilson was sound-
ing Russia's right to the friendship and the pro-
tection of our country.

There is, moreover, a voice calling for these defini-
tions of principle and of purpose which is, it seems to
me, more thrilling and more compelling than any of
the many moving voices with which the troubled air of
the world is filled. It is the voice of the Russian peo-
ple. They are prostrate and all but helpless, it would

395

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

seem, before the grim power of Germany, which has
hitherto known no relenting and no pity. Their power,
apparently, is shattered, and yet their soul is not sub-
servient. They will not yield either in principle or in
action. The conception of what is right, of what is
humane and honorable for them to accept, has been
stated with a frankness, a largeness of view, a gener-
osity of spirit, and a universal human sympathy which
must challenge the admiration of every friend of man-
kind; and they have refused to compound their ideas
or desert others that they themselves may be safe.
They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in
what, if in anything, our purpose and our spirit differs
from theirs ; and I believe that the people of the United
States would wish me to respond with utter simplicity
and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe
it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some
way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to
assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope
of liberty and ordered peace.

All that week Russia celebrated busily and
gaily. On New Year's Eve I found myself at
the peasants' headquarters on the Fontanka
Canal. There were about a hundred of us
crowded together in a small room to watch the
New Year come to Petrograd. Marie Spiri-
donova was our hostess.

We sat on benches at long tables, and ate soup,
roast pig, meat cutlets, and Russian pasties made

396

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

of light bread and filled with chopped cabbage
and chopped meat.

The room was lit with candles planted in the
necks of bottles or poised upon the pointed spears
of desk-files. In one corner was a Christmas
tree, a sad little tree with crude red crape paper
ornaments and anemic-looking candles. Outside
the door, lighting the hall, where from time to
time we adjourned to dance the Russian waltz
or the mazurka, was a single kerosene lamp.

Beside me sat a pale-faced girl with short hair,
deep circles beneath her eyes, and that look of ut-
ter exhaustion which characterized all the revolu-
tionists in those disappointing days full of the
weary work of trying to make reality match
dreams.

At the end of the table was a typical great Rus-
sian peasant, his gray belted blouse buttoned be-
neath a shaggy growth of blond beard, his round
blue eyes wide with questions. The toast-master
was a Russian Jew with the face of a poet or a
musician. The year before he would not have
been allowed to live in certain parts of Petrograd
unless he paid a bribe to some official for over-
looking the fact of his race. This hour was his.

397

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Whatever the new year might hold, he had been
a free man among men. A year since he had
been an exile in a strange land, and "free Rus-
sia" a shadowy dream. A year hence — No one
could say; no one could think that far. They
took the moment, conscious of all its possibilities,
and gloried in it.

It was a strange evening's entertainment — an
odd but typical Russian mixture of comedy and
tragedy. They made speeches, and parodied the
eloquence of the day by talking a strange and
meaningless jumble of words, switching with
lightning rapidity from one topic to another,
while the crowd rocked with laughter at the
strange effects they produced. Just at the mer-
riest moment, when the Minister of Posts and
Telegraphs had been tried and found guilty of a
number of amusing offenses against the Revolu-
tion, and the company had voted to deprive him
of his sladky (dessert), some one proposed that
they sing the hymn of eternal memory to the com-
rades who had fallen in the Revolution. Silently
they stood, and, while the church bells outside
chimed a requiem to the great red year of

398

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

tragedy and glory, they sang the solemn tribute
to their dead.

Marie Spiridonova went from table to table,
trying to make the strange ones feel at home.
She was sitting beside me, quietly talking, when
a sudden murmur ran through the crowd and a
flare of light touched the ceiling. We looked up
to find the doorway filled with flames. The lamp
had caught fire. The little revolutionist made a
bound toward it, and threw a coat over the burn-
ing mass. The spirit of panic had run like flames
through the room, and at least half of the occu-
pants were on their feet, rushing for the door.
Spiridonova lifted her tiny hands and waved
them as I have seen her do so many times in the
peasants' conventions.

"Tavarischi! Tavarischi! Tiche! Tiche!" she
cried, and they settled quietly back in their places.

On New Year's night the first volunteer army
of the Revolution left Petrograd for the front.
They gathered in the Mikhailovsky Menage,
which has seen many strange meetings in the revo-
lutionary year. In the old days the aristocracy
came here to watch "officers and gentlemen" take

399

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

part in riding competitions. Since the war it has
been used as a garage for armored motor-cars,
and many a sharp contest between revolutionary
leaders took place here. The meeting was called
for two o'clock, and Nicolai Lenin was to review
the forces. As usual, it was seven before the
ceremonies started. Two armored cars, deco-
rated with evergreens and red banners, stood
watch at the entrance. Inside a third armored
car had been trimmed for use as a tribunal. On
either side of the huge building were rows of
formidable mud-colored motors.

The place was swarming with men. They
were a tatterdemalion lot, who made up in spirit
what they lacked in equipment. There were a
few soldiers among them, but most of them were
factory workers. They had no uniforms, no
blankets; some of them wore short jackets and
some of them long coats. They were going they
knew not where, but going to fight the foes of
revolution. Their tin pails and meager packs
were strapped to their backs or tied on with rope
or string, and each man's most precious posses-
sion was his rifle. They were bound for the
trenches, to fill up the gaps left by deserting sol-

400

New Russia votes for the Constituent Assemblv

Young Russia makes revolutionary demonstration at school

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

diers. Most of them were undersized; some were
mere boys; but all were fired with faith in their
cause.

Dark settled early upon the big garage. By
four o'clock it was quite black. For a while we
stood there, unable to distinguish one face from
another, listening to them sing. Then candles
were brought. One man came with a balalika,
another with a tambourine, a third with an ac-
cordion. They struck up a lively village tune,
and a couple of soldiers, packs and guns still on
their backs, began to dance. A ring was quickly
formed, and, one after another, the men from the
various provinces clicked off the favorite dances
of their villages. Three times the word came that
Lenin had arrived, and the men lined up to salute
him. Each time it was a false alarm, and they
went back to their dancing.

At last he came, and a mighty cheer went up.
His brown eyes were shining, and the chill winter
evening had painted two bright spots upon his
cheeks. He wore a black fur cap and a black
overcoat, and there was a brisk, pleasant cheeri-
ness about him that the rogues'-gallery pictures
of him do not suggest.

401

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"He looks like a prosperous French bourgeois
banker," said an Englishman standing beside me.

"Xo," I answered; "more like a contented
Irishman behind a freshly filled pipe."

I was standing beside the tribunal, and he
stopped to shake hands with me before he climbed
to the improvised platform. He spoke briefly,
telling the men that the fate of the Revolution was
in their hands and they must guard it against all
foes. He spoke well, but without the eloquence
with which I had seen Trotzky sweep so many
crowds.

When he had finished, the chairman asked
Albert Williams to speak. He had been study-
ing Russian strenuously, and decided to try to
to talk to the men in their own language. They
were as delighted as children over his effort, and
when he began groping frantically for a word,
Lenin laughingly supplied it. When he finished
they cheered him until the building rocked. He
had stolen the honors from the Commissary of
Commissaries, and none was more pleased than
Lenin himself.

He talked with us for a few minutes, then
drove away in a closed limousine with two or three

402

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

other men. He had hardly got out of sight when
a bullet came crashing through the windows of
his car and whizzed over his head. A man sitting
beside him was slightly injured, but Lenin was
unhurt. It was the first of many attempts upon
his life. No one ever knew who had fired the
shot. The next holiday date on the Russian
calendar was January 8. That was the day of
the "Blessing of the Waters." Except for the
great Easter, there was formerly no holier day in
all of Holy Russia. All over the Empire the
people, from the Tsar in the Winter Palace to
the simplest peasant in the most remote village,
always turned out in festival processions. The
priests, in splendid robes, with painted ikons and
silken banners held aloft, marched to the banks
of the frozen rivers, followed by the singing mul-
titudes. This year the great day pasased un-
noticed.

At the appointed hour for the ceremony I left
the War Hotel and crossed the square to the huge
St. Isaac's Cathedral. I looked through the door
into a vast empty cavern. I made my way to-
ward the Neva. There was no procession in
sight. Not a living thing was abroad on the

403

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

banks of the river. Instead of the usual mighty
gathering, a handful of people, perhaps a dozen
at most, had started out, grown discouraged, and
turned back. For the first time in the memory
of the oldest peasant in Russia, the waters went
unblessed.

It was a significant fact. When the Tsar
crashed down from his throne in March, he car-
ried more with him than the rest of the world
dreamed at that moment. His picture shared a
place on the wall beside the sacred ikon. He
represented on earth that which God represented
in heaven. It was a dangerous partnership ; for
when the state fell, the Church tottered also.

The Russian Church of the past was on the side
of the established order. It was as much a tool
of absolutism as the secret police. The priests
were used to help intrench the Tsar, enforce the
will of the bureaucracy, and carry out the orders
of the gendarme. The deep religious craving of
the Russian nature was perverted to keep the peo-
ple in subjection. The Church was not of the
people, nor for the people. When the great
crisis came, they repudiated it. Despite all at*
tempts at democratization, the people drifted fur-

404?

REVOLUTION TAKES A HOLIDAY

ther and further away. The lamps before the
sacred shrines on the street-corners went out, and
the number of the passers-by who stopped to
cross themselves grew smaller and smaller. The
great power of the Russian Church, around which
so much of the life of the past clustered, was gone.
No one could predict what the future would hold.
On that day there was some discussion about it.
Some said that reaction would come and a disil-
lusioned people would return to their old gods.

"Some day," I heard one Russian say, "the
peasant will awake in the midst of his misfortunes,
and recall that on January 8, 1918, the waters
were not blessed. To this he will attribute all
his troubles."

The Russian peasant, mystic, simple, childlike
person that he is, accepts or rejects the whole.
In his past the Church pervaded every aspect of
his life. It was one of the few streaks of color
that pierced the drabness of existence. When his
disillusionment came, it was complete.

Some said that the Russian would attempt to
construct an ethical religion upon the ruins of the
picturesque orthodox church; some that he will
substitute a new faith for his saints of other days.

405

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Some hope that the freed priests, whose very ex-
istence depended upon their submission to the
evils of the old order, may become new leaders
and helpers.

No one can tell. In the meantime, the candle-
sticks before the ikons are empty.

406

CHAPTER XXI

ON THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

THE Constituent Assembly met under the
Bolshevik guns of Smolney Institute. Although
it was the hope and fear of the Russian Republic,
it came and went in the space of twelve hours.
It was born in bloodshed, and died in bloodshed,
and with it died the last hope of the moderate
Socialist and the bourgeoisie.

Its brief moment of existence began at four
o'clock on the afternoon of January 18, and it
was dispersed at four o'clock the next morning by
the "Do svidanya!" of a Russian sailor, who
sleepily informed the members it was time to go
home.

Eleven months had passed since the first joyous
shout of free Russia had filled the Petrograd
streets with "Long live the Constituent Assem-
bly!"

First one faction had carried this banner aloft,
and discarded it; and then another. The group

407

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

in power always feared it. During the days of
the various coalition cabinets, the radicals clam-
ored for immediate convocation. The last phrase
that Trotzky uttered, when he and his followers
bolted from the Council of the Republic at the
first stormy sitting of that body, was, "Long
live the Constituent Assembly!"

When the Bolshevist Revolution gave all power
to the Soviet, the opposition Socialists, the Cadets
(Constitutional Democrats), and even such mon-
archists as still ventured an opinion, rallied
around the standard of the Constituent Assembly,
and marked its date for the fall of the People's
Commissaries. Many people who had opposed
and delayed its meeting suddenly -became its
staunchest supporters. It was to be the final
test of strength.

The Bolsheviki had announced that it could not
meet until four hundred members had convened,
and placed armed guards at the palace entrances
to see their decree was carried out.

The Assembly was scheduled to meet Tuesday,
December 11, and the day was declared a na-
tional holiday. The shops and banks closed, and
thousands of municipal employees, students,

408

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

cadets, government and bank employees, and a
few workmen and peasants, marched with ban-
ners to the palace, singing revolutionary songs
as they went.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, the thirty-
five delegates already arrived gathered around a
great mahogany table in the library, and resolved
to declare the Constituent Assembly open.
Mayor Shreider, of the dissolved city Duma, the
oldest member present, was chosen to speak the
words.

Saroken, one of the delegates, reported that
Shingareff, Kokoshkin, and Prince Dolgorukoff
had been arrested, and proposed a thoroughly
Russian method of meeting the situation.

"We must refrain from protesting against
their arrest, and refrain from demanding their
freedom," he said. "We have simply to recog-
nize that they are free. Only the weak can pro-
test, and only those who have no power need to
demand. We are powerful. We have not to
demand nor protest. Members of the Constitu-
ent Assembly can not be arrested. Therefore
they are free."

Roditcheff, who had been a member of three
409

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Dumas under the Tsar, remained unconvinced
by this logic, and demanded a protest. It was
written.

Chernoff accused the Bolsheviki of being like
the Mahommedans, who wanted to burn all the
books but the Koran, on the ground that all
things necessary to be said were said in the Koran,
and all other books must either say something dif-
ferent, in which case they should be burned, or
must say the same thing, which would be a waste
of words.

"The Constituent Assembly, if it is against the
Bolshevik, it would not represent the people,
if it is for the Bolsheviki, it will merely repeat
what they have already done," he said.

Trotzky and Lenin had no hesitancy in declar-
ing that, unless the Constituent Assembly was
Bolshevik, it would not represent the people, and
therefore must be dissolved.

They said, quite truthfully, that the Assembly
was chosen according to election laws made by
the coalition government, and conducted by of-
ficials representative of that group, and of the
political rather than of the economic ideal.

The Revolution that overthrew Tsarism was
410

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

basically a political revolution. That which es-
tablished the dictatorship of the proletariat was
fundamentally economic. Between the political
and the economic revolutions, the demands of the
masses had undergone a sweeping change. The
Constituent Assembly, in spite of its socialistic
membership, and its claim of being the only
elective group in Russia, was a bequest of the
political Revolution.

More than a month elapsed between the time
of that abortive meeting of thirty-five members,
and the date of the actual opening of the na-
tional gathering.

Petrograd awaited the hour with faint hope
and much misgiving.

On January 16, the "Extraordinary Commis-
sion for the Protection of Petrograd" declared
the city in a state of siege, and issued the follow-
ing proclamation:

TO THE POPULATION OF PETROGRAD!

The Extraordinary Commission for the Protection
of Petrograd is in possession of information that coun-
ter-revolutionists of all shades, united in the struggle
against the Soviet authorities, have scheduled their
demonstraton for January 18 — the day of the opening
of the Constituent Assembly.

411

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

It has also become known that the leaders of these
counter-revolutionary plots are Filonenko, Savinkoff,
and Kerensky, who arrived in Petrograd, coming from
the Don from Kaledin.

The organization of the counter-revolutionists is be-
ing supported through considerable funds by the Mos-
cow and Petrograd bankers and speculators.

The Extraordinary Commission has taken appropri-
ate measures for the maintenance of strict revolutionary
order in the capital.

Making this public to all citizens of Petrograd, the
Extraordinary Commission calls their attention to the
following :

(1) Petrograd is in a state of siege, and all attempts
of pogroms will be suppressed by armed force.

(2) Any insubordination to the orders of the repre-
sentatives of people's authorities will entail stringent
measures of reprisal.

(3) Any attempt of groups of counter-revolution-
ists to penetrate into the district of the Tauridian
Palace or the Smolney, beginning with January 18> will
be energetically stopped by armed force.

(4) Comrades and Citizens, loyal to the authority
of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Soviets, are called upon
to retain complete calm, to support the maintenance
of strictest order everywhere, and not to participate in
demonstrations, meetings, and street crowdings, in or-
der not to suffer accidentally should it prove necessary
to apply armed force against the counter-revolutionists.

EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION FOE THE PROTECTION

OF PETROGRAD.

January 16, 1918, 11 p. M.

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

Despite this proclamation, plans for a demon-
stration went on, and we were all prepared for
trouble.

A box in the Tauride Palace had been placed
at the disposal of Colonel Raymond Robins, and
he asked me to join his party.

It was ten o'clock on the morning of the 18th
when we left the War Hotel. With us were
Edgar T. Sisson of the United States Depart-
ment of Public Information, and the Russian,
Alex Gomberg. We drove first to the Foreign
Office, where Trotzky's secretary, who was to be
the fifth of the group, awaited us.

On the snow-covered stones a crowd of officers
with red banners formed in marching order.
Across the Winter Palace Square came a Cos-
sack of the "Wild" Division, in flying cape of
shaggy fur. He was astride a tiny black pony,
and rode with the perfect ease of men of the
Urals. A Red Guard, who sat an uneasy and
unaccustomed seat upon a fractious horse, tried
vainly to overtake him. They were a striking
pair of black silhouettes against the snow-clad
world that morning.

We drove back to the Nevsky. At the Mik-
413

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

hailovskaya we met another group of demon-
strators, preparing to march to the Grave of the
Brotherhood on Marsovo Pola, where the victims
of the first Revolution were buried. Most of
them were striking bank employees, and, as they
stood there waiting to go forward, they argued
with the soldiers who lined the sidewalks, urging
them to march for the Constituent Assembly.

The street-cars were stopped on account of the
snow. Forty or fifty conductors, men and
women, in gold-braided uniforms of blue broad-
cloth, were clearing the tracks with wooden
shovels. Deliberately or unconsciously, they
formed an effective block to the paraders. An
officer asked them to move. Their answer was
short and final :

"We won't get out of the way for the bourge-
oisie !"

We turned in the direction of the Marsovo
Pola. As we came within sight of it, we heard
a volley of machine-gun fire in the direction of
the Liteiny. The white field was deserted.
Garlands of green were looped around the huge
mound, and the red wreaths were like splotches
of blood against the white snow. A parade mar-

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

shal, with a red band around his arm, stood at
one corner, the center of a small and excited
group.

"Where are the people?" Colonel Robins asked
him.

"They won't let them come," he said. "They
are shooting them down in the streets."

We drove along the Liteiny in the direction of
the firing. At the Kirotchnia, we came sud-
denly upon a group of Red Guards and sailors,
brandishing ominous guns. They rushed about,
tossing orders at one another, their faces flushed
with excitement.

"Murderers! Murderers!" shouted a woman,
shaking her fist in their direction.

"Murderers! Murderers!" echoed a dozen
other women, who turned blazing eyes upon them.

Scattered all over the snow were broken and
splintered wooden poles — all that remained of
the proud banners that a few minutes before had
proclaimed "All Power to the Constituent As-
sembly" and "Long Live the Boss of Russian
Land!"

We did not need to ask what had happened.
The broken poles told the story.

415

THE RED* HEART OF RUSSIA

Down the Liteiny and into the Furstadtskaya
our little Siberian pony pulled the sleigh across
the bloodstained snow. Men and women hud-
dled in doorways. Their coats were dusted with
white, and as they brushed one another off they
talked in frightened voices. Some of them were
ghastly pale, in spite of the biting chill of the win-
ter morning. The wounded had been carried up-
stairs to a Red Cross hospital, and the dead-
fifteen was the day's toll, according to official re-
ports next morning — had also been removed.

The paraders had penetrated within the for-
bidden zone. They had refused to heed the or-
ders of the guard to stop. A hand-to-hand fight
followed. Some one fired a shot. There was
another and another, and in a moment the havoc
was complete. Fifteen human beings had died
to save the Revolution. Perhaps fifteen others
had killed to save the Revolution. Both groups
were fighting for the same thing, but the word
spelled a different set of meanings to each.

It was noon when we pulled up before the
Tauride Palace. More than a century ago the
great yellow building was flung there by the wave
of Catherine's hand or the scratch of her quill

416

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

pen, and dedicated to the needs of the favorite
of the hour. It lay across three or four city
blocks, shining in a new coat of yellow calcium.
White snow covered roofs and cornices like deep
frosting, and spilled over the edge in a fringe of
lacy icicles.

Behind the upper windows, hidden from public
gaze, were six machine-guns, with tapes loaded
for use. Within a moment's call, the gunners
waited for action. Behind the ornate iron fences,
Red Guards arid sailors paced ceaselessly back
and forth.

We made our way through a procession of
sentries into the Palace, up the broad staircases,
across a wide lobby, and into a huge ball-room.
Great circles of light were reflected on the pol-
ished floor from the mammoth candelabra hung
on the frescoed ceiling somewhere up near the
sky. There were guards and more guards, stairs
and more stairs, until at last a sailor politely
forced us into a box overlooking the Assembly.

The auditorium was a great square room sur-
rounded by balconies and roofed with glass. The
seats were arranged like a fan in widening circles.
They were cushioned with red leather, and strips

417

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of red carpet ran like ribs toward the tribunal,
where slender bay trees stretched their green
arms against the white columns. Here red-
leather-cushioned couches marked the places
where the many mighty men of Russaia's past had
sat. Here, in due time, came the People's Com-
missaries.

Trotzky was away at Brest-Litovsk. Kolon-
tai, Commissary of Public Welfare, was the first
to take her place. She came in with a large
brief-case under her arm, and paused for a mo-
ment to search the crowd for comrade faces.
Krylenko, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army,
was just behind her, hurrying in with that quick,
nervous stride so familiar to all of us who fre-
quented the corridors at Smolney. Krylenko
was always going somewhere in a great rush, and
we never saw much of him except a grotesque and
fleeting picture of his long, narrow back, and the
little short legs that carried it.

Lunarcharsky, the Commissary of Education,
came next. Volodarsky — whom one Russian
called "The little bell that always echoes
Trotzky" — and half a dozen lesser lights slipped
quietly into their seats. Last of all came Lenin,

418

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

his merry brown eyes bright and his face serene.

The hours went on. We punctuated them
with many glasses of tea. Nothing happened.
Three o'clock came. I wandered out on the bal-
cony, and looked down upon the ball-room, where
men and women paced back and forth across the
inlaid floor. They seemed like pygmy people be-
side the massive columns. The bigness of the
North and the splendor of departed ages was in
that room. The largeness of a great materialis-
tic dream was there, and the work of countless
little men tossed into the building at the command
of a single woman. The little men and the big
woman had long since crumbled to dust. To-
day other little men — the inheritors of the build-
ers, the masons and carpenters, peasants and
factory workers — were here. They were the one
tremendous fact of the moment.

Back in the assembly room, more and more
seats were filled. Chernoff was there. I had
last seen him sitting dejectedly in a corner at the
Peasants' Convention, shaking his head, while his
tiny arch-enemy, Marie Spiridonova, swayed the
meeting to her will. In a few minutes these two
were again to be pitted against each other. Tse-

419

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

retelli, whose dark, sad face and tragic eyes had
not been seen in public places since the dissolution
of the Council of the Republic, had also come.

At four o'clock a bell rang, and a member of
the "Right S. R." — the conservative wing of the
Socialist Revolutionists — asked that the oldest
man in the convention be chosen to open the As-
sembly. The right side of the house arose and
vigorously applauded the suggestion.

The members of the left sat stolidly in their
seats and hammered their desks, shouting, "Sverd-
loff ! Sverdloff!" For fully five minutes they
pounded without ceasing, their closed fists mak-
ing a din that drowned every other sound. The
white-haired, white-whiskered old man who had
taken his place on the rostrum looked from left
to right in a bewildered way, and finally yielded
the gavel to Sverdloff.

The Bolsheviki had won the first round in the
fight. The Assembly was to be officially opened
by the government.

Sverdloff was the chairman of the Executive
Committee of the All-Russian Soviet. He was a
small, pale, dark little chap, quick moving and
fiery spirited. He began by saying that, as in

420

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

their time the French bourgeois revolutionists
made a declaration of the rights of man, so the
Socialist members of this new time must make
their own declaration, fitting the hour and the
new demand. He followed with a statement of
the Bolshevik program of land to the peasants,
control of industry by the workers, government
by the Soviets, recognition of the People's Com-
missaries by the Constituent Assembly, and im-
mediate general democratic peace.

The Bolsheviki punctuated his speech with
vigorous applause. The right Socialists ex-
pressed themselves equally emphatically by stolid
silence.

When he finished, a delegate proposed that
the Assembly sing the "International." It was
a challenge no Socialist could refuse. They arose
to a man. This was the first and last time, in
that stormy twelve hours' session, that they were
united upon any single point.

The Cadet members had all remained away.
Every man in the room was a Socialist. But
worlds of unbridgable distance kept them apart.
Combination and compromise were utterly im-
possible. The Bolsheviki had all the powers of

421

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

possession, reinforced by the unanimous backing
of the Russian bayonets. The conservatives had
a feeble and helpless majority.

The right S. R.'s proposed Chernoff as chair-
man of the Assembly, Squertsoff, an old Mos-
cow schoolmaster, nominated Marie Spiridonova
in a brief challenge of uncompromise.

"Everything is ended between us," he said.
"You are with the Cadets and the bourgeoisie.
We are with the workers!"

In their choice of leaders, both parties were
flinging wide to catch the Russian peasant.
They were reaching into the thatched huts of
White Russia and the log cabins of Siberia, and
they were using the two human beings who could
be counted upon to make the greatest appeal to
the men who gather round the Russian stoves at
night, and talk politics in simple peasant fashion.

Some one suggested, as a compromise, that
there be two chairmen. It was voted down.
Krylenko proposed that Kerensky be elected.
Some one else indignantly declared it was no time
to joke.

The vote was counted. From the box I
watched the tellers dropping the tiny marbles

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

from one bowl into another. My note-book was
open upon my lap. Every time a marble
dropped I made a mark. When the last vote was
counted, I turned to Colonel Robins :

"It 's Chernoff 1" I said. "He has 244 votes to
Marie Spiridonova's 151."

The others had not noticed what I was doing,
and they looked up, wondering whether I had
suddenly become clairvoyant or merely gone mad.
I showed them my pen-scratchings. From the
platform, the chairman confirmed my figures.

After the election the flood-gates of speech
were opened. Denunciation followed denuncia-
tion. The evening hours ran on to midnight, and
with each passing hour the possibility of compro-
mise seemed farther and farther away.

Chernoff's opening speech was greeted with
cries of "Deloy! Deloy!" (Down! Down!)
The empty space in the back of our box was filled
up with men. A dark, swarthy-skinned factory
worker, with sullen eyes, that flamed red and
went black by turns, sat just behind me. Poised
on the railing was a Bolshevik sailor, who inter-
rupted frequently with shouts of "Korniloff!
Kaledin ! Kerensky ! Counter-revolutionist !"

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

In the adjoining box Trotzky's sister, Madame
Kameneff, sat, surrounded by soldiers with new
revolvers in shining cases strapped at their hips.
In the room where the Right S. R.'s held their
meetings, a machine-gun spoke a silent but none
the less ominous warning.

Every one of those four hundred delegates was
a human bomb, ready to explode at any second.
Lenin alone seemed unperturbed. He stretched
himself out on one of the red-carpeted steps of
the tribunal, and, hidden from the eyes of the
crowd, went calmly to sleep.

The only speaker to whom the radical mem-
bers paid the slightest attention was Tseretelli.
To me he was the heroic figure of the day. He
pleaded a lost cause, but he made a brave last
stand. His position was uncompromising on the
main issue, and therefore impossible; but he
talked with a sincerity and straightforwardness
that commanded the respect, if not the agreement,
of his opponents.

After his speech, the Bolsheviki demanded from
the Constituent Assembly confirmation of the
decrees already passed regarding peace, land,
and control of industry. Most of all, they de-

4*4

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

manded recognition of the Soviet government as
the supreme power. They asked that the ques-
tion of the government be settled first.

The conservative majority voted to consider
war and peace first, the land question next, and
finally a federative republic, thus postponing the
fatal issue. With this, the Bolsheviki demanded
the right of intermission for party caucus. It
was granted.

Two hours passed. Nothing happened. The
members of the Right grew impatient. The
Chairman reopened the meeting, and Skobeleff,
former Minister of Labor, demanded the ap-
pointment of a commission to investigate the
bloodshed of the day.

Representatives of the Left filed back to their
seats. A Bolshevik member read a statement
declaring that the majority of the Constituent
Assembly had refused to accept the demands of
the People's Commissaries, which were the de-
mands of the toiling masses and the economic
revolution, and in so doing had become a counter-
revolutionary body.

With that the Bolsheviki left the hall. The
Left S. R.'s, headed by Marie Spiridonova and

425

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

a handsome young revolutionist named Komkoff,
remained to offer a resolution that the Constitu-
ent Assembly recognize the peace steps of the
People's. Commissaries. The delegates refused.
Instead, they passed a resolution asking, in the
name of the Constituent Assembly, that all coun-
tries at war come to an agreement for a general
democratic peace.

A sudden commotion arose. Two men were
on their feet, hurling ugly names at each other.
One drew a revolver. Some one grabbed him
and pressed him quickly into his seat. The dif-
ference of opinion was a personal one. For a
terrible minute the crowd sat breathless. The
guards in the balcony, thinking a real fight was
about to begin, loaded their guns. Quiet re-
turned in a flash, and the chairman went on with
the meeting; but the incident had not helped to
loosen the taut nerves. The Left S. R.'s got up
quietly from their seats, and departed from the
convention as the Bolsheviki had done.

For half an hour the meeting continued. A
resolution proclaiming the Federated Republic
of Russia was passed. The question of nation-
alization of land without compensation was in-

426

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

troduced. Before the discussion had progressed
far, the guard ordered the meeting closed.

"I was appointed to defend the Constituent
Assembly," said the commissary of the palace.
"This meeting has now become simply a party
caucus, and we suggest that you retire to the
headquarters of the Right S. R."

The guard yawned. President Chernoff de-
murred. The guns once more began to assume
ominous positions.

"Why should we wait? We should arrest all!
We should kill the counter-revolutionist Chern-
off!" came in angry murmurs from factory work-
ers and soldiers.

The delegates looked from one to another.
Some one moved a resolution to adjourn
until five that afternoon. It was promptly
adopted.

The murmurs of "Counter -revolutionist!"
grew louder and louder. The soldiers and sail-
ors flocked down the stairs, and crowded around
the delegates. Some of the Bolshevik members
who had remained in the ball-room surrounded
Chernoff, and took him in safety through the
hostile throng to the gate.

427

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Every man who walked out in the gray morn-
ing knew that the Constituent Assembly was at
an end.

It was foredoomed to just this fate. Its exist-
ence hung upon one point — the acceptance or re-
jection of a government of people's commissaries.
For the moderate Socialists to have accepted the
Bolsheviki, whose leaders they had denounced as
usurpers and traitors and whose work they had
been sabotaging, would from their standpoint
have been impossible.

For the People's Commissaries to have per-
mitted themselves to be rejected would have been
to acknowledge themselves a body of adventur-
ers, and all of their decrees mere scraps of worth-
less paper.

I have never met in any country any group of
men possessed of such power as theirs who would
have acted otherwise.

The Constituent Assembly contained the seeds
of a great governmental experiment, but they
were scattered upon the rocks of uncompromise,
and there could be no harvest.

At midnight Albert Williams was talking to
Madame Kolontai.

4*8

THE ROCKS OF UNCOMPROMISE

"How long do you think the Constituent As-
sembly will last?" he asked.

"Comrade, don't you think it has lasted too
long already?" she answered.

CHAPTER XXII

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

THE Constituent Assembly never met again.

At the hour when the delegates were supposed
to reassemble, the Tauride Palace was dark. In
the white hall at Smolney the members of the
Central Executive Committee of the All-Rus-
sian Soviet were gathered to discuss its dissolu-
tion. For all practical purposes, this had been
accomplished that morning when the guard told
the members to go home. The Central Execu-
tive Committee was merely planning to place its
rubber stamp upon the proceedings.

In the chair was Sverdloff — the very same who
the day before had presided at the historic gath-
ering. The meeting opened in a storm. Half a
dozen speakers demanded an investigation of the
bloodshed. Rosanoff, the head of the labor
unions, and several other men protested against
the dissolution of the Assembly. Then Lenin
arrived. As he walked down the aisle, Kramer-

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

off, the good-natured but irrepressible protestor
at all meetings, arose to the full height of his six
feet five and shouted:

"Long live the dictator!"

In a minute there was a mob of angry men
upon their feet, angry at Krameroff and shout-
ing violently:

"Put him out ! Put him out !"

When the chairman had calmed them, Lenin
took his place. He stood quietly for a moment,
surveying his audience, with his hands in his
pockets and an appraising expression in his brown
eyes. He knew what was expected of him. He
must win the wavering members of his own flock.
He must reach out to the larger audience spread
over the vast areas of Russia. He must speak
so that he would be heard beyond the confines of
his country, in that world whose attention was
focused for the time on this group of strange new
actors in the international drama. Lenin began
quietly tracing the historical developments of the
Soviet as an institution. He made a critical an-
alysis of the workings of various parliaments, de-
claring that they had become merely a sparring-
place for the verbal contests of socialists.

431

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"In Russia," he said, "the workers have de-
veloped organizations, which give them power to
execute their aspirations. You are told that we
ask you to jump a hundred years. We do not
ask you to do anything. We did not organize
the Soviets. They were not organized in 1917:
they were created in the revolution of 1905. The
people organized the Soviets. When I tell you
that the government of the Soviets is superior to
the Constituent Assembly, that it is more funda-
mentally representative of the will of the mass,
I do not tell you anything new. As long ago
as April 4, 1 told you that the Soviets were more
representative of the people than this Constitu-
ent Assembly which you wanted to organize."

He explained in detail the political break in
the Social Revolutionary Party, and said:

"When the people voted for delegates of the
Constituent Assembly, they did not know the
difference between the Right S. R.'s and the
Left. They did not know that when they voted
for the Right Social Revolutionists they voted for
the bourgeoisie, and when they voted for the Left
they voted for Socialism."

At first he spoke quietly, but before long his
432

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

hands had come out of his pockets. These, and
his brown eyes alternately snapping and smiling,
and his eyebrows humorously expressive, all vig-
orously emphasized his phrases.

It was evident from the faces of the men be-
fore him that he was justifying himself and them
to their satisfaction.

"The February Revolution was a political
bourgeois revolution overthrowing Tsarism. In
November a social revolution occurred, and the
working masses became the sovereign authority.
The Workmen's and Soldiers' delegates are not
bound by any rules or traditions to the old
bourgeois society. Their government has taken
all the power and rights into its own hands. The
Constituent Assembly is the highest expression
of the political ideals of bourgeois society, which
are no longer necessary in a Socialist state. The
Constituent Assembly will be dissolved.

"If the Constituent Assembly represented the
will of the people, we would shout: 'Long live
the Constituent Assembly!' Instead we shout:
'Down with the Constituent Assembly!' " he fin-
ished.

In the seat next to me was a little Bessarabian
483

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

soldier with black beady eyes and a short, bristling
mustache. He had a merry face that crinkled
when he smiled. Every now and then he gave
his head a queer little shake of amazed admira-
tion and whispered:

"He 5s a wise man. He 's a wise man."

Lenin was saying for the simple Bessarabian
just what he would like to have been able to say
for himself.

A few of the most conservative men remained
unconvinced. The irrepressible Krameroff
shouted: "Stydno, Lenin, stydno!" (Shame.)
But the vote proved that Lenin was voicing the
will of all but a small minority.

Soukhonoff, of the Novia Jizn group, whose
leader was Maxim Gorky, gained the floor, and
protested against the suppression of the press.

"The people even in Petrograd don't know
what transpired in the walls of Tauride. It is
more than a crime; it is a blunder," he said.

Soukhonoff voiced the attitude of the Intelli-
gentzia. The case of Maxim Gorky is rather
typical, though Gorky is of a more extreme na-
ture and expresses himself more violently than
most of the literati. They were all theoretical

434

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

advocates of revolution, but they shrank from the
practice of it. The logic of events found them
out of sympathy with revolution in the very stage
of development that they had prayed and fought
for.

During the Kerensky regime, Gorky, through
his paper, blasted at the government, and his voice
was the loudest, urging the crowd to more ex-
treme measures. When the crowd moved, as
crowds always move, in its own way, Gorky could
not follow. Ever since the March Revolution he
had been ill most of the time, and thus shut off
from contact with facts. His opinions necessa-
rily had to be based on reports carried in to him.
The woman who has been his companion for
many years was a Cadet, and bitter against the
Bolsheviki. Much of his news sifted in through
her, and naturally he has been influenced by her.
Gorky has made his great contribution to Rus-
sian revolution — & contribution no man can deny.
It is a pity that in his old age he should find him-
self out of step with his comrades.

The revolutionists of the literary group are not
happy in the present situation. Through the
years they fought for free speech, free press, and

435

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

free ballot. Suddenly they found the new revo-
lutionists, pragmatists to the last degree, being
forced by the exigencies of the situation to use
the very same weapons as those of monarchical
invention. In order to accept the new gods set
up in the economic temple by the proletariat lead-
ers, the literati had to deny, for the moment at
least, their old gods. Few of them could make
the necessary mental somersault. They found
themselves, by virtue of denouncing something in
which they did not believe, forced into a de-
fense of something in which they also did not
believe.

They published one issue of "Paper Protest,"
in which they expressed their ideas. Korolenko,
Sologub, Kiryakoff, Mijoueff, Mereshkovsky,
and several others of the Russian writers who
played so vigorous a part in revolutionary educa-
tion in Russia, wrote brief articles. On the
whole the paper was a feeble thing, hardly
worthy of the subject or the authors, but indica-
tive of the state of mind of the Intelligentzia.

The strike of the Intelligentzia continued
through January. A few of the strikers in the
various ministries went back to work, but most

436

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

of them were still sabotaging. It was this sabo-
tage that led to restrictions upon the amounts of
money which might be drawn from the banks.
The bourgeoisie, by paying the salaries of the
officials, was making the continuation of the strike
possible. With unlimited money at their com-
mand, the Soviets were powerless to make them
go back to work.

"They '11 never stop sabotaging till we hit them
in the pocket-book," said one of the speakers at
a meeting of the Central Executive Comrnittee,
when a proposed decree was under discussion.

It was decided that the gold hoarded in safe-
deposit vaults should be seized, and the amounts
found deposited to the credit of the owners. It
was announced that the interests of small deposi-
tors would be protected, and investigation made
of the accounts of large depositors.

Even if the Bolsheviki had been able to rally
all the Intelligentzia to their support, the task of
feeding, warming, and clothing Russia would
have been an almost impossible one. With star-
vation forever at their heels, they somehow staved
it off from day to day. The black bread grew
blacker and more uneatable, and sometimes we

437

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

wondered what strange ingredients besides straw
and chaff could have gone into its making.

Since the factories closed for lack of raw ma-
terial with which to manufacture, the workmen
were organized and armed as Red Guardsmen.
Even if every factory in Russia had continued to
operate, it would not have been possible to sup-
ply the needs of the peasants and the army. Just
as Germany is one huge factory, Russia is one
great granary. Even in peace times, she manu-
factured but a small part of her necessities.
With imports and manufactures both stopped,
her condition became desperate. As stocks in the
shops dwindled, prices soared correspondingly.

Snow piled up in mountains and valleys on
the streets, and driving an izvostchik down the
Nevsky was like riding on a roller-coaster.
Sometimes the street-cars ran, but more often the
snow was heaped so high that the tracks were im-
passable. Sometimes, when they were cleared
for action, there was not sufficient coal to operate
the electric plants. About half of the cars in
Moscow and Petrograd were out of commission
for lack of repairs, and thousands of engines and
freight-cars were piled upon the sidings in the

438

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

railroad yards. But for the faithfulness of the
railroad employees, Russia's condition must have
been even worse. Repeatedly they put off their
demands for higher wages because they were per-
suaded by each group of changing powers that
the Revolution would suffer. The switchmen's
families were without the barest necessities as the
price of food went up and the value of the ruble
went down. Many times the men threatened
strikes, but always their loyalty to the Revolution
won the day and the strike would be postponed.

Petrograd, in the closing days of January, be-
came more and more bleak.

The clanging swords and the clicking spurs of
officers filing back and forth across the marble
lobby in the War Hotel were gone. The hotel
had been take over by the People's Commissaries.
In the dining-room I sat down to frugal meals
with peasants, workmen, soldiers, agitators, and
poets.

Food was daily less plentiful. Cabbage soup,
black bread, and rabchik, a wild bird for which
we all acquired a deathless hatred, made up the
daily menu. Only the glasses of steaming tea
saved us from gastronomic despair. The supply

439

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of knives, forks, and spoons, dwindling ever since
the beginning of the war, was now almost ex-
hausted. Frequently a single knife served in-
stead of a teaspoon for an entire table. Often
we waited for tea until the people across the room
finished with their glasses.

Most of the time we were in total darkness.
There were no lamps or candles in the halls, and
we groped our way up the dark staircases, bump-
ing blindly into one another's arms. There was
an unhappy affinity between the electric light,
the elevator, and the water system. They all
stopped together. Frequently my face remained
unwashed until the late afternoon, when I went
to the Hotel Europe for tea. The Europe
proudly boasted its own electric plant, and it was
still possible to live there in comparative comfort
and even luxury.

The waiters in the War Hotel complained that
there was no money to buy food. A few of them,
used to the generous tips of pre-revolutionary
days, bemoaned the fall of the monarchy and
prayed for the coming of the Germans. They
were not the only ones who awaited Prussian de-
liverance. Most of the upper-class Russians no

440

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

longer made any attempt to hide their willingness
to have the Germans come to Petrograd.

Even my little princess friend, Orchidee, who
had been educated in France and whose natural
sympathies were all with the Allies, admitted to
me that she hoped the Germans would come soon.
We were lunching together. In the party were
an English officer and a Russian who before the
Revolution was in charge of the Grand Duch-
esses' hospital train.

"You don't really mean it," I said.

"Yes, I do," she answered. "I like the Eng-
lish, and I should like to have them come and
rule us ; but they will not. If the Germans come,
we can keep our titles and our estates. Why
shouldn't we want them?"

"And you?" I asked, turning to the other Rus-
sian. "Do you feel the same?"

"Yes," he answered. "It is the only hope for
us. The Eolsheviki will take all."

They were demonstrating the Marxian theory
that one's conduct is dictated by one's economic
desires. They were being forced by the new or-
der to give up their privileges, and to ask them
to like it was to expect the impossible. For some

441

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

of them the situation was tragic. They were
products of the system, just as were the unedu-
cated Russian peasant and the class-conscious
revolutionary workers.

One man characterized his country for me by
saying:

"Russia is like a badly baked loaf of bread.
It is raw on one side and burned on the other.
The great peasant mass is left in ignorance and
poverty, while the upper class has nothing but
luxury and useless culture."

The luxury was disappearing. The "useless
culture" did them little good in a state that recog-
nized no value but that of production. The land-
owner, suddenly bereft of his estates, like the mil-
itary man deprived of his epaulets and his salary,
was frequently a pathetic figure. The life of the
dying class is not easy. On the streets of Mos-
cow and Petrograd, officers were shoveling snow,
or selling newspapers, or trucking baggage to
buy the barest necessities. In some cases, the
women, proving less unfit than the men of the
family, had become the bread-winners. The old
picture money of the Tsar's day disappeared, and
the post-revolutionary issues of currency, prac-

442

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

tically the only exchange in the market, were
accepted with a single sneering word — "Keren-
sky."

The Anarchists grew more daring in the days
immediately following the dissolution of the Con-
stituent Assembly.

"What is the use of government?" the Anar-
chists asked. "The Bolsheviki promised you
bread, and promised you peace. Where is your
bread ? Where is your peace ? All governments
are alike — the Bolsheviki just the same as the
others ! You must take the factories ! Take the
land! Why do you wait?"

The army had become a hungry horde of ill-
shod and ill-clothed men with but a single desire
upon earth — to get back to whatever corner of
that vast land they called home. They had
stayed in the trenches for nearly a year after they
had made their first demand for peace. Their
committee meetings had become pathetic recitals
by the delegates of the conditions of their men.
The horses were dying from lack of feed. The
men were suffering hideously in the frozen
trenches because of lack of boots and clothing.

Again and again the delegates declared:
443

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"They say they '11 stand it just one more week
and that 's all."

When the week was up, in spite of the tortures
of cold and hunger, most of them still stayed on.
The committees were unequal to the task of pro-
visioning the army. Given the same conditions,
any group of officials, any dictator, any Tsar,
would have failed equally; but the unthinking
critics of Russia persisted in placing all the blame
for the disorganization of the army and navy
upon the committees. As a matter of fact, the
disorganization came first, and the committees
afterward. They were an outgrowth of the chaos
that immediately followed the fall of the Tsar.
They were the attempt of the men themselves to
bring some sort of order out of the confusion that
naturally resulted when the governor of the Rus-
sian engine was suddenly removed.

In July General Denikine, in command in Ga-
licia during the disastrous offensive, made a re-
port to the War Council in which he described
conditions existing as early as June, saying :

"We no longer have any infantry. I will make
the statement stronger, and say we no longer
have any army. The army is in ruins."

444

THE INTELLIGENTZIA OBJECTS

February was almost here.

Nothing had happened to improve the army —
everything had happened to complete its disor-
ganization. Considering the condition of that
army, the miracle was not that they left the
trenches so soon, but that they stayed so long.
Considering the frightful conditions in Russia,
the amazing thing was not that there was so much
violence, but that there was not more.

445

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

LOOKING back, so much is clear!

On a gray November evening out on the Rus-
sian front not far from Dvinsk, the gunners, de-
livering a daily salute to the German trenches,
heard a muttered command to stop firing. They
turned to face a line of soldiers in coarse mud-
colored coats, their trench-tanned faces grimly
set beneath shaggy hats of sheepskin.

The gunners shrugged theft shoulders and
turned to the battery. "Stop firing," again came
the command.

"Who said so?" asked one of the gunners.

"We say so," a soldier answered. "Those are
our brothers over there. The war is finished. It
was the Tsar's war. They are workingmen and
peasants like us. They don't want to fight us;
we don't want to fight them. Stop firing."

The gunner laughed.

"If you don't stop shooting, we '11 shoot you.
446

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

I tell you, you 're killing our brothers," said the
soldier again, in the same quiet, final tone.

From that hour the battery was silent.
Through the Russian trenches the word had gone
that peace was coming. An armistice was to be
arranged in a few days, and Germany and Aus-
tria and all of Russia's Allies were to be asked to
take part.

It was still November. The armistice nego-
tiations were on. The great parley at Brest-
Litovsk had commenced. The Allies had not
come, but a special train had pulled out of Petro-
grad with the strangest collection of envoys that
ever went upon a foreign mission. There were
twenty-eight members, headed by Adolph Joffe,
a Russian Jew, and including a soldier, a sailor,
a workman, a peasant, and one woman. There
were others in the delegation not so glad to go as
these. They were military experts, obeying or-
ders from Smolney expressed in terms that per-
mitted no other alternative. They were officers
of the Russian army, thoroughly out of sympa-
thy with the undertaking and the men who were
making it — every tenet of their codes, every fiber
of their poor, bewildered, uncomprehending be-

447

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ings outraged by this new topsy-turvy world in
which they had been plunged.

The train had arrived. The efficient Germans
had built a special track across that strip of No
Man's Land which divided their territory from
that of the Russians. Each member of the party
was provided with his own servant, a German sol-
dier who spoke Russian. Shoes and clothes were
cleaned, and no detail of preparation had been
neglected. In the rooms to which the visitors
were taken there was letter paper and eau de
cologne, for which the Russian has a special fond-
ness.

The Russians proposed their terms of armi-
stice. They demanded that no troops be trans-
ferred from the eastern front to the fronts of the
Allies during the period of the armistice, and that
fraternization take place. General Hoffman de-
clared that the armistice conditions were only such
as could be proposed to a defeated nation. The
delegates asked for instructions from the Com-
missaries, and were told to stand firm on these
conditions.

Back in Petrograd, Trotzky was talking.

"In our negotiations with our present Allies
448

Meeting in the library of the Tauride Palace December 11 where in defiance of the
People's Commissaries the Constituent Assembly was declared open

The Constituent Assembly as it finally convened in the Tauride Palace January 18

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

and enemies, we will be constantly on our guard/'
he said. "Under no circumstances will we allow
them to distort the principles of general peace
proclaimed by the Russian Revolution. We will
propound to them most categorical questions, and
every word pronounced by them or by us will be
transmitted by wireless to all the nations of the
world, who will be the judges of our negotia-
tions."

Petrograd waited, one ear turned in the direc-
tion of Brest-Litovsk, and the other pressed
against the world's key-hole, listening for rum-
blings of revolutions in other lands.

Night after night, in the white hall at Smolney,
at the Peasants' headquarters, in the Narodny
Dom and the Cirque Modern, the men in the mud-
colored uniforms talked about it.

"We soldiers, we trench inhabitants, we must
have something to say," I heard one of them de-
clare; and another:

"We can not conduct peace negotiations by
going up to the German generals with a copy of
Karl Marx in our hands."

And a third:

"We must be able to speak loudly in revolu-
449

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tionary language, and back our language up by
cannon if necessary, but for revolutionary pur-
poses— not for the commercial interests of the
Allies."

"Slava, Slava, Slava" (Words, words, words),
said another.

The discussion centered largely on the question
of the removal of troops.

"Prohibition of removal of troops to the front
should cover reserves in the rear as well, and
also cannon," said a delegate named Lapin-
sky. "It is necessary for us to guard against all
these things in order that the Allied troops and
masses should know that the Russian Revolution
has no intention of permitting them to be crushed
by the Germans. We are not concerned with
ourselves only. We must remember that the
Germans have not accepted our peace terms.
We must deal with the facts as they are. They
have accepted our formulae applying the princi-
ples to the Russian camp, — not to the German
camp, — to the Poles and others whom they have
subjugated. We must see that imperialism in
Austria and Germany does not triumph."

The guns on the Russian front were still.
450

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

The last shot to echo across to us in Petrograd
was that with which the Russian General Skaloon
at Brest-Litovsk dramatically ended his life in a
room adjoining that in which the armistice con-
ference was being held.

General Hoffman had accepted the terms "such
as could be proposed only to a defeated nation."
The fact that he was humoring the Russians, that
he might trick them the more thoroughly in the
end, was not evident. The Bolsheviki, disap-
pointed that the Allies had refused to consider
coming into their conference, found crumbs of
comfort in the concessions of Germany.

"It must mean," they argued, "that the Kaiser
fears the German masses. They will make him
accept our honest, democratic peace."

December 15 saw the armistice signed, and by
noon of the 17th it had gone into effect.

The night before, at a rump convention of the
Peasants' Deputies, I heard Leon Trotzky make
his report of the proceedings at Brest. He
talked for three hours, answering the questions
of his soldier peasant audience.

The meeting began in a fashion typical of
those days in Russia, where night after night in

451

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

every available hall in Petrograd men were shak-
ing their fists in one another's faces.

The Peasants' Convention had split in its at-
titude toward the People's Commissaries. The
Bolshevist members and the Left Social Revolu-
tionists anticipated welcoming Trotzky as Com-
missary of Foreign Affairs. The center faction,
led by Chernoff , refused to acknowledge him in
any capacity but that of private citizen.

In the midst of the discussion, Trotzky ar-
rived. The Bolsheviki jumped to their feet and
started a rousing demonstration in which the ma-
jority joined. The others sat stolidly in their
chairs, and some whistled — the Russian equiva-
lent of a hiss. For ten minutes pandemonium
reigned. Trotzky stood silent, head up and eyes
flashing behind his glasses. Finally he crossed
the room to the adjoining hall, opened the door,
and walked in. I followed him. The room was
dark, except for a green-shaded student-lamp
upon a table near the rostrum. Trotzky sat
down at the table. Soon a crowd of soldiers came
pouring through the door. More and more fol-
lowed, until every seat in the council chamber

452

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

and every inch of space in aisles and stairways
was packed.

They elected a temporary chairman, and re-
solved to hear the report of the Commissary of
Foreign Affairs. Trotzky arose to speak, and
this time the demonstration met no opposing
voice.

He reviewed the general international situa-
tion, then analyzed the armistice terms.

"We will ask the Germans first if they accept
our terms of peace — peace without annexation,
contributions, and self -definition of nations," said
Trotzky. "Then we will ask what Germany
means by those terms — how does she apply them?
When we understand each other fully, we will
have a week's interruption to let the people of
the world know what we are doing. We want
general peace. We have given the Allies a
month in which to make peace. If they want
more time, I suppose we can give them a little
more, but we can not continue the slaughter for
their sakes. We want general peace, but we
can not let Russia bleed to death. We can not
go on forever. We must get back to our farms

453

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

and our factories. The Kaiser hates the Revolu-
tion, and most of all the Soviet government, but
he recognizes the demand of the masses. We did
not send any diplomats to Brest-Litovsk, it is
true. Our people have spent more time in Si-
berian prisons than in diplomatic offices, but our
program is right, and so long as we fight for that
we can not die. We do not go before the gov-
ernments of the world as a defeated nation, but
as a victorious one. Our position is the stronger
because we have no secret desires and can be quite
honest. The Allies have refused to send dele-
gates to the peace conference, but we must look
out for the interests of the masses of the Allied
countries, and we will do so. We must have a
peace, because we must save the cultural posses-
sions of the age and preserve the revolutionary
energy of the proletariat."

Down from Berlin to No Man's Land came a
supply of tobacco, accordions, flashlights, bad
whisky, and Hindenburg schneights (knives).
Behind the German lines the soldier merchants
set up their wares, and the Russians in worn boots
and faded coats walked out across No Man's
Land to trade with them. The Germans asked

454

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

for soap, bread, and clothing; also they would sell
for rubles — old picture rubles of the Tsar's
regime. They turned up their noses at "Keren-
sky" money, and would have none of the Bolshe-
vist issue.

The Russian soldiers had little bread to give
them — they had all too little for themselves — and
less clothing. But they told their German broth-
ers, with shining, thankful eyes, how glad they
were that peace was coming — that they would no
longer have to kill each other. They advised
them to go home and make a revolution, as they
had done, and promised that in this new world of
brothers there should be an end to wars.

Inside the council chamber at Brest-Litovsk,
the German Foreign Minister reminded delegates
of the season of the year.

"It is an auspicious circumstance that the ne-
gotiations open within sight of that festival which
for centuries past has promised peace on earth,
good will to men," he said. "Our negotiations
will be guided by the spirit of peaceable humanity
and of mutual esteem."

It was Saturday, December 22. Prince Leo-
pold of Bavaria was there. The Austrian For-

455

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

eign Minister, Count Czernin, with a delegation
of eight Austrians, was there; and from Bul-
garia, Minister Popoff and four assistants, Ne-
simy Bey, former Minister of Foreign Affairs
from Turkey, Ambassador Hakki, General
Zekki, and under foreign secretary Hemit Bey.

The plenipotentiaries of the Central Powers
were taking the delegation seriously. General
Hoffman paid gallant compliments to Madame
Bitzenko, and laughingly suggested that they
have their photographs taken together. Von
Kuhlmann asked the chief of the Russian delega-
tion to state the main principles of the Russian
peace proposal. The Russian demands num-
bered fifteen, applying the now famous formula
to the world situation. On Christmas the Ger-
mans submitted their counter-proposals.

In Petrograd we listened day and night for
the ticking of a wireless message from Brest-
Litovsk. A German and Austrian delegation
arrived, and took up headquarters at the Hotel
Angletaire and at the Grand just around the
corner. Little blond Petroff came in, loudly
protesting that he had no platters on which to
bring me my dinner, because they had all been

456

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

taken to feed the Germans. Occasionally, with
some of my American friends, I sat at dinner
at a table adjoining that at which the Germans
were dining. We regarded them curiously, and
they looked upon us with equal suspicion.

I spent much of my time at Smolney those
days, anxious for the first word that would indi-
cate the Russian attitude toward the German
peace terms. One day there was a rumor abroad
that Russia would reject the counter-proposal.

At Smolney that night the Executive Com-
mittee listened to a report, and voted for its re-
jection. The resolution declared that the domi-
nant parties in Germany, compelled by a popular
demand to grant concessions to the principles of a
democratic peace, were nevertheless trying to dis-
tort the idea to aid their own annexationist policy.

Already Germany was showing her hand.
She contended that the will of the people of Po-
land, Lithuania, arid Courland had already been
manifested. The Russians declared this allega-
tion to be devoid of all foundation.

"Under martial law and under the yoke of a
military censorship, the peoples of the occupied
countries could not express their will," they said.

457

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"The documents upon which the German govern-
ment bases its allegation at Brest prove the mani-
festation of the will of a few privileged groups
only, and in no way the will of the masses in those
territories.

"We now declare that the Russian Revolution
remains faithful to the policy of internationalism.
We defend the right of Poland, Lithuania, and
Courland to dispose of their own destiny, ac-
tually and freely. Never will we recognize the
justice of imposing the will of a foreign nation
on any other nation."

The Russian Soviet appealed to the people of
Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria in these
words :

"Under your pressure, your governments have
been obliged to accept the motto of no annexa-
tions and no indemnities, but recently they have
been trying to carry on their old policy of eva-
sion. Remember that the conclusion of an im-
mediate democratic peace will depend actually
and above all on you. All the people of Europe
look to you, exhausted and bled by such a war as
there never was before, that you will not permit

458

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the Austro-German imperialists to make war
against Revolutionary Russia for the subjuga-
tion of Poland, Lithuania, Courland, and Ar-

menia."

The Soviet bombed the German trenches with
propaganda. On January 2 they circulated a
pamphlet in the German lines declaring that the
peace conditions submitted by the Central Pow-
ers showed the German promises of a democratic
peace to be unconscionable lies.

The pamphlet asserted that Germany wanted
to free the peoples on Russia's western frontier
from the sphere of revolution, in order to sub-
jugate them to the German will, that they might
impose an Austrian monarchy on Poland and
make Lithuania and Courland German duchies.

The Russians asked for transfer of any fur-
ther negotiations to Stockholm. In Germany
the military party declared that the break be-
tween Russia and Germany was caused by this
demand, keeping their people in ignorance for
some time of the fact that the break had come
from Germany's refusal to evacute Russian ter-
ritory.

459

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Trotzky himself went to the second confer-
ence, protesting that his government would not
yield.

"We did not overthrow the Tsar to bow to
German imperialism/' he said.

Germany practically delivered an ultimatum:
"Parleys at Brest-Litovsk or none."

"Our government placed at the head of its
program a world's peace, but it promised the peo-
ple to sign only a democratic and just peace,"
Trotzky said. "The sympathies of the Russian
people are with her Allies and with the working
classes of Germany."

He declared that the refusal of the Central
Powers to transfer the conference to a neutral
site could be explained only by the determination
of the government and the annexationist groups
to base their dealings, not on reconciliations of
peoples, but on the war map.

"But war maps disappear while peoples re-
main," said Trotzky. "Annexationist agitators
are trying to persuade the German people that
behind the open and frank policy of Russia is
a British or other stage-manager. Therefore we
have decided to remain at Brest-Litovsk, so that

460

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the slightest possibility of peace may not be lost;
so that it may be established whether peace is
possible with the Central Powers without vio-
lence to the Poles, Letts, Armenians, and all
other nationalities to which the Russian Revolu-
tion assures full right of development, without
reservation or restriction."

At this session General Hoffman protested
against wireless messages containing abuse of
German military institutions and revolutionary
appeals to the German troops. He declared
they transgressed the spirit of the armistice by
attempting to introduce civil war into the Cen-
tral Powers.

Trotzky replied that all German newspapers
were freely admitted into Russia. General
Hoffman said he was not referring to the press,
but to official government utterances. Kiihl-
mann said that non-interference in Russian
affairs was the fixed principle of 'the German
government, and that his government had the
right to demand reciprocity.

Trotzky responded with an invitation to criti-
cism:

"The Russians will recognize it as a step for-
461

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ward if the Germans freely and frankly express
their views regarding internal conditions in Rus-
sia so far as they think it necessary."

Trotzky demanded, on behalf of the Russians,
the immediate repatriation of deported Poles and
Lithuanians, and the liberation of Bohemians,
Czechs, and others arrested for participation in
pacifist propaganda, declaring the return of ref-
ugees to Poland and Lithuania of the utmost im-
portance in the question of self-determination,
and insisting that the Russians would not aban-
don their demands. The session ended in dis-
agreement. General Hoffman charged the Rus-
sian delegation with speaking as if "it stood
victorious in our countries and could dictate con-
ditions."

Kiihlmann announced that it would be neces-
sary to hold a consultation between the Teutonic
Allies before any further statement could be
made.

Meanwhile, the anti-Bolshevist Rada from
the Ukraine was holding separate peace par-
leys with the Central Powers, and, unlike the
Soviet government, its negotiations were
secret.

462

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

All sorts of rumors found their way to us in
Petrograd. German soldiers arriving from the
front said they had deserted the army and, with
several thousand others, were encamped in a wood
behind the German lines, where, equipped with
machine-guns, they were defying a German ad-
vance on Russia. Strikes were breaking out in
Austria and Germany. In Petrograd the third
congress of the Council of Workmen's and Sol-
diers' Deputies met on January 23. On the 27th
Leon Trotzky made his report.

It showed that at last the Germans, convinced
that resistance upon the part of the Russians was
impossible, were unmasking their real aims.

"Practically," he said, "the German terms
mean that the governments of Austria and Ger-
many take into their own hands the destiny of
the Poles, the Letts, the Lithuanians, and the
Esthonians."

Trotzky drew a comparison between the pres-
ent peace aims, and the peace terms of the Reichs-
tag resolution of July supporting a peace with-
out indemnities and annexations, and the peace
terms of the Germany of December 25, which
lured the Russians to trust the democratic utter-

468

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ances of the enemy. He showed that the new
frontiers were planned not only to subjugate all
the people within the conquered territories, but
to make further German aggression easy.

"The whole German argument was based on
the assumption that the Russian government
would understand, but be silent and grateful to
the Germans for saving their faces by giving a
mock-democratic character to their peace," said
Trotzky. "The bourgeois governments can sign
any kind of a peace; the governments of the So-
viet can not."

He declared that the Ukrainian Rada was at
that moment trying to make a separate peace,
and insisted that, whatever happened, he would
not sign a "non-democratic peace."

Trotzky sparred for time. He knew that his
government could not live surrounded by coun-
tries practising a different social creed. He
counted on the spread of revolt simultaneously in
the Ukraine, in Finland, in Austria, and in Ger-
many. He did not foresee the German-inspired
invitation to German troops to put down revolu-
tion in Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic prov-
inces.

464

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

On the ninth of February the Ukraine, upon
which France had banked to keep Russia from
making a peace, concluded a separate peace
herself. The following day the Soviet govern-
ment announced its withdrawal from the war,
and also its determination not to sign an annexa-
tionist treaty, declaring its firm belief that the
workers of Germany and Austria would not
permit any new offensive against the workers of
Russia.

Five days later Germany announced her in-
tention to resume military operations against
Russia. On the 18th, to the amazement of the
populace behind the Russian line, the German
troops along the entire front advanced.

They took Dvinsk with little opposition. It
was late afternoon in a snow-clad village beyond
the Dvinsk lines not far from the point at which,
in November, the infantry had ordered the Rus-
sian gunners to stop firing. Word had come
that the Germans were advancing. A shudder
passed through the village. There was a hur-
ried gathering. Some suggested fleeing, others
counseled waiting.

"It 's a mistake," said a white-bearded peas-
465

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

ant. "We are not at war. They are our broth-
ers— we must go and tell them."

They appointed a committee, improvised a
white flag, and set out on their errand. A short
distance from the village they met the advancing
Germans. They held their white flag bravely
aloft, and a soldier spokesman began to ex-
plain :

"It is all a mistake — Russia is not at war. We
do not want to fight our German brothers — "

The sentence was never finished. The com-
mittee did not come back. Instead, to the wait-
ing women with frightened children clinging to
their wide calico skirts, and with a terrible fear
in their eyes, there came the Germans.

Germany was marching over the prostrate and
bewildered form of the country she had tricked
and betrayed. Uncomprehension and despair
settled upon Petrograd. The People's Commis-
saries met in all-night session. Trotzky wanted
to fight, even though effective resistance was im-
possible. Lenin opposed him. There was
nothing to fight with. The army had reached
the limit of disorganization. Economic chaos

466

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

reigned behind the lines. There was neither an
army at the front nor a nation behind capable of
supporting an army.

All night the Commissaries debated. Toward
dawn Lenin's will finally prevailed. A procla-
mation was issued protesting against the German
advance, but stating:

"The Council of People's Commissaries re-
gards itself as forced formally to declare its will-
ingness to sign a peace upon the conditions dic-
tated by the delegates of the Quadruple Alliance
at Brest-Litovsk."

The information was sent by wireless to Ger-
many. The Germans demanded written confir-
mation. It was despatched to Dvinsk by special
messenger. Still the Germans' advance contin-
ued. They occupied Esthonia, overran the Uk-
raine, and created a Turkish offensive in the Cau-
casus. They made no answer to the People's
Commissaries, and on February 22 the Bolshev-
iki called on the people to organize guerrilla
warfare and resist the invaders.

Again the Bolsheviki appealed to the German
working classes.

467

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

"Once more the German working class in this
threatened hour has shown itself insufficiently
determined to stay the criminal hand of its own
militarism. We had no other choice but to ac-
cept the conditions of German imperialism until
a revolution changes or cancels them. The Ger-
man government is not hastening to reply to us,
evidently aiming to seize as many important po-
sitions in our territory as possible. The enemy
has occupied Dvinsk, Werder, and Lutsk, and is
continuing to strangle by hunger the most im-
portant centers of the Revolution. We even
now are convinced firmly that the German work-
ing classes will rise against the attempts of the
ruling classes to stifle the Revolution, but we
can not predict with certainty when this will
occur. The German imperialists may hesitate
at nothing for the purpose of destroying the au-
thority of the councils and taking the land from
the peasants."

The Commissaries called on all loyal councils
and army organizations to use all efforts to re-
create the army.

The next day Kiihlmann submitted a new offer
of peace, imposing yet more drastic terms upon

468

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

the broken country, and demanded that it be ac-
cepted within forty-eight hours.

Again Lenin insisted that it must be accepted.

"Their knees are on our chests and our posi-
tion is hopeless," he said. "This peace must be
accepted as a respite enabling us to prepare a de-
cisive resistance to the bourgeoisie and imperial-
ists. The proletariat of the whole world will
come to our aid. Then we shall renew the fight.
All the bourgeoisie in Russia is jubilant at the
approach of the Germans. Only a blind man,
or men infatuated by phrases, can fail to see that
the policy of a revolutionary war without an
army is water in the bourgeois mill. In the
bourgeois papers there is already exaltation in
view of the impending overthrow of the Soviet
government by the Germans. We are compelled
to submit to a distressing peace."

Trotzky was absent from this meeting, and the
Central Executive Committee, by a vote of a
hundred and twelve against eighty-four, accepted
Lenin's view; and the decision was telegraphed
to the German government.

"Surely now hostilities would cease!" thought
the Russians.

469

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

A new peace deputation was elected.
Trotzky, who favored fighting, was displaced as
Foreign Minister. The German government did
not reply to the Russian acceptance. The Ger-
man troops kept marching on. The Soviet gov-
ernment called upon the people:

"Resistance becomes the principal task of the
Revolution."

The workers filled the ranks of the volunteer
"Red Army," led by officers of the bourgeoise.
There was hardly a factory worker left in Petro-
grad, and, untrained as they were, they were
soldiers because they had a cause. The German
advance was checked at Pskoff. The Red
Guards recaptured Orsha. The regular troops,
an uncomprehending horde of bewildered and di-
lapidated soldiers, fled in panic before their "Ger-
man brothers," looting and pillaging as they
went.

It was a hopeless situation. The Red Guards
had not only to fight the highly organized Ger-
man legions, but they had to disarm the panic-
stricken Russian soldiers. In the rear they were
fighting Kaledin, Korniloff, and the troops of
the Ukrainian Rada. None of these were fight-

470

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

ing the Germans. In action they had alined
themselves with German absolutism, and were
seeking to overthrow the Russian democracy —
the Soviet government.

The diplomats had been so busy hunting for
German money in the camp of the Bolsheviki
that they had overlooked entirely the Ukraine,
the Baltic provinces, and Finland. The Ukraine
situation has been shot through with Austrian and
German money since the beginning of the Revo-
lution. It had been a hot-bed of intrigue. More
potent than the power of money was the natural
economic desire of the upper classes in each of
these places. It was not the Ukrainian worker
and peasant who made a separate peace with
Germany. It was not the Finnish Red Guard
who invited the Germans in to subjugate their
fellow countrymen. It was not the class-con-
scious masses of the Baltic provinces, crushed
beneath the boot of the German-bred Black
Barons, who cried to the Kaiser for deliverance.

Something more dangerous to the peace of
the world than a government of workers, peas-
ants, and soldiers had been carefully builded by
the German agents.

471

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

When Prince Leopold of Bavaria told his ad-
vancing troops they were going upon a mission
of altruism and humanity, he neglected to tell
them that the people whom they were going to
save were not the masses of the Russians, trying
to work out their own salvation against desperate
odds, but the land barons and monarchists of the
old order whom the Revolution overthrew.

The Russians were blind to the true character
of the men who came to Brest-Litovsk to nego-
tiate a kaiser's peace; but the blindness of those
Russian dreamers was lucid vision as compared
with the blindness of the enlightened democratic
world as to the real significance of the various
forces at work upon the Russian tragedy. We
will pay for that blindness, — we must pay, — for
democracy is not safe in the world while Russia
is enslaved. No settlement of the international
situation will be lasting that does not leave the
peoples of Russia free to work out their own
democratic salvation.

The failure of Allied diplomacy in Russia was
due to the undemocratic nature of the existing
diplomatic system.

It is not enough to know the movements of
472

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

kings and kaisers, the pleasure of military lead-
ers, of the will of the aristocracy. In a fight for
democracy, the people, in the last analysis, are
the important factor. The true study of demo-
cratic diplomacy is the study of the movements
of the masses undisturbed by our own beliefs,
preconceptions, or prejudices.

They were difficult — those Russians; difficult
as dreamers and children always are. They
lashed us with their scorn. They impugned our
motives. They "swept into the ash-barrel of his-
tory" our secret treaties and dismissed us as cap-
italists and imperialists.

The German autocracy, arch-enemy of all de-
mocracy, had succeeded in its gigantic scheme to
drive a wedge between Russia and her Allies —
had trapped Russia into the belief that the Ger-
man people wanted nothing but an honest demo-
cratic peace, and that only the Allies stood be-
tween them and their desire. In their minds,
our aloofness gave color to the declaration of
their leaders:

"Our Revolution will be crushed by the im-
perialism of the western democracies."

Germany proposed new peace terms. The
473

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Russian delegates did not even stop to examine
them. They said they knew they must sign
whatever the terms might be. They signed a
peace that was not a peace — a peace that Ger-
many disregarded more flagrantly each passing
hour — a, peace that will never be a peace.

"It is our peace of Tilsit [1810]," Lenin said;
"but we will finally attain our peace of 1814.
Probably we shall not have to wait so long, be-
cause history is moving faster in these days."

Truly, the Commissary of Commissaries was
right: "their knees are upon our chests."

474

A MESSAGE TO MARS

WE were five in the little blue room in the War
Hotel that night. It was one of my last in Pet-
rograd. The electric lights, fickle at best, had
failed entirely.

The tiny sputtering flame of the olive-green
candle disclosed distant vistas in the eyes of
Zamiatin.

Zamiatin was one of the younger of the Rus-
sian writers — a deep, quiet, imaginative chap,
who talked in fables, with long spaces of silence
between.

The Bolsheviki were the subject of our dis-
cussion. We argued breathlessly, with flushed
faces and shining eyes, as one always argued in
Russia during the hectic nights and days of the
red Russian year.

Zamiatin put down his glass of tea, and with
his forefinger began to trace the crimson pattern
on the Bokhara table-cover.

"When I was a boy," he said, "a little fellow
475

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

about thirteen or fourteen, I read a book — I have
forgotten the name — a Russian version of some-
thing like 'A Romance of Two Worlds.' It set
strange imaginings whirling in my brain. I told
my comrades about it, and they became as ex-
cited as I.

1 'Off there in the big black sky above the silver
birches was a planet called Mars, peopled like
ours with human beings. We made up our
minds to get into communication with those other
people. We thought of many plans. Finally
we conceived the idea of building a great letter
'A' and setting it on fire. We believed Mars
would see and answer us, and in a very short time
we would arrange an alphabet and carry on long
conversations. Perhaps it would revolutionize
the whole universe — who knew? We were on
fire with the idea.

"We told our parents about it, but somehow
they did not seem to realize its importance.
There was a famine in the village that year, and
they were busy trying to get food to the people.
They had no time for us and our great scheme.

"But this did not discourage us. We went on
just the same. We cut down logs in the forest,

476

A MESSAGE TO MARS

and built a monster 'A,' bigger even than our
dreams of it. The great night came. We set it
on fire, and then, standing in breathless silence,
eyes fastened on the velvet blackness, we waited.
We waited and we waited. Nothing happened.
Mars did not answer."

Zamiatin lifted his finger from the crimson
spot upon the Bokhara cover, and settled back
in his chair. For a moment we sat there, tense
and quiet as that group of small boys on the edge
of the forest a score of years ago.

They built a letter "A" there in the City of
Peter in the fall of 1917. They set it afire.
Then — simple, trusting, hoping children that
they are — they waited — and waited. There
was nothing wrong with the letter "A," but Mars
did not answer.

Blinded by schemes of conquest and dreams of
Empire, Mars could not see.

"Universal peace; brotherhood; no annexations
or contributions ; and self -definition of nations — "

It was an alphabet Mars could not compre-
hend, born of a blind faith the glory and beauty
of which Mars can not know, and the rest of us
only half suspect.

477

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

Zamiatin was not a Bolshevik. He belongs to
the Russian intelligentzia. Like the others, he
had preached theoretical revolution, but his spirit
shrank from the hard, accomplished fact.

But Zamiatin, with his boy's experience and
his artist's visioning, had seen the letter 'A,' and
felt the wonder and the tragedy of the dream of
those men drawn back from exile to flash flaming
signals at the universe.

The train that carried me away from Petro-
grad was almost the last to pass in safety through
war-torn Finland. Troubled days were full
upon her, but the frozen face of her was as calm
and peaceful as a sleeping child.

The City of Peter lay behind me, wrapped in
the gray morning mist. Tragedy was in the air.
That vague, frightful thing — the Terror — was
on every man's tongue. Apprehension was in
every man's eye. Lurking there in the black
shadows of every human brain were the words:
^L "The Germans!" To a few they were a secret
/ hope — restored titles, estates returned. To the

478

A MESSAGE TO MARS

mass — death and destruction and shattered
dreams.

I looked through the mist down a long vista of
coming years, and asked of the mysterious, in-
scrutable city what would be left of the hour and
the place for another age.

Time seems to have his own peculiar sense of
values. He sifts out most of the things we would
save. For every time the world of to-day thinks
of the Franco-Prussian War it speaks a hundred
times of the French Revolution. Out of the de-
feat of France there came that great historic
milestone marking the struggle of the mass to
climb from under.

Out of the success of Prussia there came Prus-
sian militarism, to breed its own ultimate destruc-
tion. Time may reject the battle of the Somme
and the Gallipoli campaign, and dismiss the
blockade and the submarine with a word; pos-
sibly he will have forgotten entirely the names
of Cabinet ministers and great generals: but I
doubt whether he will discard the Russian Revo-
lution.

Revolution is the blind protest of the mass
against their own ignorant state. It is as impor-

479

THE RED HEART OF RUSSIA

tant to Time as the first awkward struggle of
the amoeba. It is man in the act of making him-
self.

Time will be able to overlook the pathetic, the
tragic, the cruel, the silly forms of expression that
revolt frequently takes, and see only the magnifi-
cent urge behind those expressions.

Time will have all the advantage over us. He
will be able to keep his emotions from getting tan-
gled up in the situation. He will be able to put
the Bolsheviki and the Mensheviki, the Cadets
and the Social Revolutionists, in their proper
pigeonholes.

Time will give to the world war, the political
revolution, and the social revolution their true
values. We can not do it. We are too close to
the facts to see the truth.

To have failed to see the hope in the Russian
Revolution is to be as a blind man looking at a
sunrise.

Mingled with my sorrow, the morning I left
Petrograd, was a certain exultant, tragic joy. I
had been alive at a great moment, and knew that
it was great.

THE END

480

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